Fort Morgan, Colorado

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In the early 19^th century, various fur trapping companies set up posts along the front range of the Rocky Mountains in what is now Colorado: Bent and St. Vrain (Fort Lookout), Sublette and Vasquez, Fort Jackson, and Fort Lupton. These “forts” were built in the 1830s within 10 miles of the South Platte River” forming a chain connecting the fur traders.

Trappers based at these forts and working for larger companies went out into the wilderness to trap beaver and buffalo or to trade with the various native tribes living in the area including the Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and occasionally the Crows, Pawnees, Shoshones and Blackfeet. Many of the pelts collected by the trappers, either through trapping or trade, would be collected or sent back east for sale.

It is difficult to track the movements of the trappers as there is little written evidence of their travels, but a few were known to have traveled along the South Platte River and likely through the Fort Morgan area.

In 1812 William H. Ashley of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company along with a young Jim Beckwourth traveled up the South Platte. In May 1827, Albert G. Boone set off from the foothills with furs and traveled down the South Platte River to St. Louis. In April of 1831, John Gantt led 70 men across the South Platte river and in 1836, Andrew Sublette took furs east through the area followed in 1838 by Peter A. Sarpy and Henry Fraeb. Other traders who possibly traded with Indians in the Fort Morgan area were Robert Newell in 1836-7, Antonio Montero in 1839-40, Sir William Drummond Stewart and William L. Sublette in 1843, Kit Carson, Oliver Perry Wiggins, James Beckwourth, and Ike Chamberline in 1846 and Kit Carson again in 1847.

Painting of William Drummond Stewart 1850. Greeting the Trappers or The Greeting

19^th century explorers such as Long and Fremont employed fur trappers who knew the area as guides, indicating that these men had been in the area for years. Two French fur trappers, Joseph Bijeau dit Bissonet (or Bissonette), for whom Bijou Creek is named (see the post Bijeau of Bijou Creek), and Abraham Ledoux (or Ladeau) living amongst the Pawnee worked as guides for the Long expedition.

George Frederick Ruxton (1821-1848), a former British soldier and travel writer would recount his adventures hunting along the front range of Colorado in 1846-1847. His book "Life in the Far West" begins near the Fort Morgan Area on the Bijou Creek where he describes a camp of some area fur trappers who he names as Killbuck and La Bonte:

Away to the head waters of the Platte, where several small streams run into the south fork of that river, and head in the broken ridges of the “Divide” which separates the valleys of the Platte and Arkansa, were camped a band of trappers on a creek called Bijou. It was the month of October, when the early frosts of the coming winter had crisped and dyed with sober brown the leaves of the cherry and quaking asp, which belted the little brook; and the ridges and peaks of the Rocky Mountains were already covered with a glittering mantel of snow, which sparkled in the still powerful rays of the autumn sun.

The camp had all the appearance of being a permanent one; for not only did one or two unusually comfortable shanties form a very conspicuous object, but the numerous stages on which huge strips of buffalo meat were hanging in process of cure, showed that the party had settled themselves here in order to lay in a store of provisions, or, as it is termed in the language of the mountains, “make mat.” Round the camp were feeding some twelve or fifteen mules and horses, having their fore-legs confined by hobbles of raw hide, and, guarding these animals, two men paced backwards and forwards, driving in the stragglers; and ever and anon ascending the bluffs which overhung the river, and, leaning on their long rifles, would sweep with their eyes the surrounding prairie. Three or four fires were burning in the encampment, on some of which Indian women were carefully tending sundry steaming pots; whilst round one, which was in the center of it, four or five stalwart hunters, clad in buckskin, sat cross-legged, pipe in mouth.

They were a trapping party from the north fork of the Platte, on their way to wintering – ground in the more southern valley of the Arkansa; some, indeed, meditating a more extended trip, even to the distant settlements of New Mexico, the paradise of mountaineers. The elder of the company was a tall gaunt man, with a face browned by a twenty years’ exposure to the extreme climate of the mountains; his long black hair, as yet scarcely tinged with gray, hung almost to his shoulders, but his cheeks and chin were cleanly shaved, after the fashion of the mountain men. His dress was the usual hunting-frock of buckskin, with long fringes down the seams, with pantaloons similarly ornamented, and mocassins of Indian make. As his companions puffed their pipes in silence, he was narrating a few of his former experiences of western life; and whilst the buffalo “hump-ribs” and “tender loin” are singing away in the pot, preparing for the hunters’ supper, we will note down the yarn as it spins from his lips…

Ruxton would travel with these trappers westward across the Kiowa River and into the mountains. He describes his traveling companions and life on the plains, encounters with the various tribes of in the area, and Mormans moving west in colorful detail and recounts stories old to him by the trappers.

Photo Robert Newell, fur trader.

Unlike most of the later travelers through the area, trappers were in the Fort Morgan area in all seasons including deep winter.

William Henry Ashley, a fur trapper and owner of the Rocky Mountain Fur Company, regularly explored the western frontier trading with various Indian tribes. On November 3, 1824 Ashley set out from Fort Atkinson with a company that included Tom Fitzpatrick, Zacharias Ham, James Clyman, Robert Campbell, Moses (“Black”) Harris, Baptiste La Jennesse, LeBrache, Dorway, and Clement (or Claymore), and James P. Beckwourth (Beckwith), who was said to have explored the South Platte River with Vaquez as early as 1817. It was the height of winter and the going was difficult. Beckwourth later recalled the difficult journey noting the slow progress, “some days not advancing more than four or five miles.”

Ashley’s party traversed the Fort Morgan area at the end of December, 1824 stopping at Fremont’s Orchard on January 1, 1825 to recuperate. Ashley described his experiences in a letter to General Henry Atkinson dated December 1, 1825:

The morning of the [December] 26th was cloudy and excessively cold. At 3 o’clock in the afternoon it began to snow and continued with violent winds until the night of the 27th. The next morning (28th) four of my horses were so benumbed with cold that they were unable to stand, although we succeeded in raising them on their feet. A delay to recruit them would have been attended with great danger, probably even to the destruction of the whole party. I therefore concluded to set forward without them.

The snow was now so deep that had it not been for the numerous herds of buffaloe [sic] moving down the river, we could not possibly have proceeded. The paths of these animals were beat on either side of the river and afforded an easy passage to our horses. These animals were essentially beneficial to us in another respect by removing (in their search for food) the snow in many places from the earth and leaving the grass exposed to view, which was the only nourishment our horses could obtain.

We continued to move forward without loss of time, hoping to be able to reach the wood described by the Indians before all our horses should become exhausted. On the 1st January, 1825, I was exceedingly surprised and no less gratified at the sight of a grove of timber, in appearance, distant some two or three miles on our front. It proved to be a grove of cottonwood of the sweet-bark kind suitable for horse food, situated on an island, offering among other conveniences, a good situation for defense. [Fremont's Orchard] I concluded to remain here several days for the purpose of recruiting my horses, and made my arrangements accordingly.

My Indian friends of the Pawne [sic] Loup deputation, believing this place to be nearly opposite to the Arapahoe and other Indian camps on the Arkansas determined to proceed hence across the country. They prepared a few pounds of meat and with each a bundle of wood tied to his back for the purpose of fuel, departed the following morning on their mission.

Being informed by the Pawneys [sic] that one hundred of my old enemies (the Arikara warriors) were encamped with the Arkansas Indians, and my situation independent of that circumstance, being rendered more vulnerable by the departure of the Indians, who had just left us, I was obliged to increase my guard from eight to sixteen men. This was much the most severe duty my men had to perform, but they did it with alacrity and cheerfulness as well as all other services required at their hands; indeed, such was their pride and ambition in the discharge of their duties, that their privations in the end became sources of amusement to them.

We remained on this island until the cottonwood fit for horse food was nearly consumed, by which time our horses were so refreshed as to justify another move forward. We therefore made arrangements for our departure and resumed our march on the 11th January…. From this last mentioned island, we had a clear and distant view of the Rocky Mountains bearing west, about sixty miles distant.

Harrison Clifford Dale, editor of the Ashley-Smith account, places the sighting of the Rocky Mountains at Beaver Fork just east of Fort Morgan though another account places the first sighting of the Rocky Mountains at Fremont’s Orchard about fourteen miles west of Fort Morgan.

Photo fur traders.

Sources:

LeRoy R. Hafen, “Fort St. Vrain,” Colorado Magazine 29 (1952): 241-255.
Henry Inman, The Great Salt Trail (New York: Macmillan, 1898), 51.
LeRoy R. Hafen & Harvey Lewis Carter, Trappers of the Far West: Sixteen Biographical Sketches (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1983), 153.
LeRoy R. Hafen, Broken Hand: The Life of Thomas Fitzpatrick, Mountain Man, Guide and Indian Agent (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1981), 44.
Harrison Clifford Dale & William Henry Ashley, The Ashley-Smith Explorations and the Discovery of a Central Route to the Pacific: 1822-1829 (Cleveland: Arthur H. Clark, 1918), 125-127.
Life in the Far West: the experiences of a British Officer in America and Mexico During the 1840s by George F. Ruxton.

Gold Seekers through Fort Morgan: Journals from 1859

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The earliest travelers set off for the Rocky Mountains even before it was certain there was gold. Confirmation wouldn't come late in the summer of 1858; anyone setting off after that point would face the cold winter of the plains and arrive when little gold could be prospected. So, most, left for the gold fields as soon as possible the following spring.

Some of the travelers reported meeting Indians, there were Cheyenne, Arapahoe, and Sioux in the area at the time, but in 1859, the whites were more a curiosity than a threat. Edward Dunsha Steele reported passing “a Camp of Shians [Cheyennes] on Bever [Beaver] Creek” on July 23^rd and after remaining in camp on the 24^th “it being Sunday – were visited by Shian [sic] Indians – also by a distinguished Sioux called Red Plume”.

One of the earliest journals was that of E. A. Bowen who left La Salle, Illinois on February 22, 1859, arriving in the Fort Morgan area in April:

April 8: …Here while in camp we first had a view of two peaks of the Rockey [sic] Mountains, a distance of 150 miles. We could not see these peakes [sic] in the daytime. We saw them distinctly after the sun went down.

April 9: …Passed Kiowa Creek [Beaver Creek]. 4 oclock P.M. Drove over Sand Ridges in the afternoon. Roads were heavy. Drove half way between Kiowa Creek Bijou Creek & turned down to River & camped. Saw one antilope [sic] early in morning…. Passed one Indian Lodge at the Kiowa Creek, some dz [dozen] Indians & Squaws – Chinani [Cheyenne] – nation.

April 10: Being Sunday we remained in camp all day. Threatened rain, but blew over. Wind blew from west toward evening very strong.

April 11: …3 miles from where we camped we crossed Bijou Creek [sic]. Dry at crossing. 3 miles from this creek we found the heaviest sand roads we had – 10 miles east of this creek sand heavy.

View of the Rocky Mountains on the Platte 50 miles from their Base. Engraving by Samuel Seymour, 1823.

Close on Bowen’s heels was E. H. N. Patterson traveling to the gold fields of the Rocky Mountains in April and May of 1859. Patterson was an experienced journalist from Illinois who had corresponded with Edgar Allan Poe in his youth and had first turned his sights on the gold of California before seeking gold in Colorado. He began his journey in March of 1859 along with William H. Phelps, Joseph C. McLinn, Eli Chase, James Collins, William Carrll, Joseph S. Hand, W. W. Rice, J. R. White, P. Murtogh, Thomas Hannegan, Timothy Miskell, Peter Hart, F. P. Speck, and Edward Speck. Patterson noted their arrival at Beaver Creek on May 28:

Our day’s travel has been somewhat monotonous and tedious, being over a broad plain covered with little else than cactus and wild sage of a dwarf variety. The bottoms on both sides of the river are short and narrow, with a wide table land, or second bench. About noon we passed a cluster of eleven trees on the opposite side of the river – a welcome sight, these lonely cottonwoods! Saw a number of boats – four or five – going down the river today; they make pretty good time, averaging three men in each, the current being about five miles an hour, and a channel of two or three feet being easily found. If they meet a rise in main Platte, they may make a successful voyage down, otherwise the shoal water in that stream will occasion much vexation and delay. At twenty miles distant we reach Beaver creek – a running stream very much resembling the Platte, on a much smaller scale; the banks are steep, but the crossing is not difficult…. Leaving Beaver creek, we traveled one mile and camped on the bank of the river, with good grass and green cottonwood for fuel, which we obtain by wading to an island…. Some of the boys have an idea that they saw the Rocky mountains this evening – perhaps it was only a cloud….

May 29. Sunrise reveals a peak of the mountains, covered with snow, standing out in bold relief against the sky, far off in the West. We only traveled twelve miles, and camped on the bank of Platte, with an abundance of wood on an island [likely very near the future site of Fort Morgan]….The patch of grass we are camped on is quite extensive, being over a half-mile in width, and extending along the river two miles or more….

May 30. Five miles over hard gravel roads brought us to a handsome little creek of clear, sparkling water [Bijou], slightly impregnated with sulpher and alkali; just before we reach it, we pass a saleratus lake, whilst yet above its mouth we saw a large spring of the same kind of water…. Authorities differ as to what is the name of the stream we just passed, whether it be Kiowa or Bijou; I will therefore call it Kiowa [Bijou]. After crossing it, we ascend to the table land again, where we have, for five miles, a hard gravelly road, very trying on the feel of the cattle…. We strike then five miles of desert – deep sand – and reach the brow of the hill, whence, by taking the right hand road, we strike the river in a short distance, at a Cottonwood grove, known as Carson’s Point…. Two miles further on, still over deep sandy roads, partly, brought us to Fremont’s Orchard, where we have lots of wood, but no good grass. There is excellent pasture two miles above, but our cattle were very much fatigued with their long, hot, dusty trip that we had to traverse today…. Fremont’s Orchard is a lovely grove of young thrifty cottonwoods and occupies a nice level area of some eight acres, entirely destitute of undergrowth, whilst the trees present the appearance of having been set out with almost the regularity of an orchard…. The lofty range of mountains, covered far down with snow and far up with dark forests, have loomed up ahead of us, all day, like some Titan sentinel set to guard this sterile waste, against the kindly influences of any angel messenger that mercy might send to bless the land and make it productive.

Patterson did not note meeting any Indians, but most of the other travelers did. Reverend William H. Goode, a Christian missionary in the western territories also spoke of the Cheyenne in the Fort Morgan area, the following excerpt starting with the Reverend Goode likely just above Sterling:

We are now among another tribe of Indians, the Cheyennes. They are passing down in great numbers, as if making some general removal, with women, children, and effects. Their mode of traveling was somewhat novel to me. Instead of packing all upon the backs of their ponies, they use the draft. The tent poles, ten or twenty in number, and about fifteen feet long, neatly trimmed, are fastened near one end to the back of a pony, the other ends carefully adjusted and spread out at different angles, so as to cover considerable space as they rest upon the ground. About midway of these the baggage is placed, and the pony trails the load along, not unfrequently displaying considerable freaks in his course, driven without bridle or halter, by a squaw or boy on another pony. Sometimes, instead of baggage, a mat bed is placed on the poles, a kind of palanquin is constructed over it, and a person aged or infirm, I suppose, or a squad of papooses, ride with all the grace and spring of one of our own ecliptics. They are great beggars, especially for something to eat. Unable to make themselves understood by words, they open their mouths and make signs indicative of filling them. The men, in most instances, we do not encourage, but the women and children, who stood modest and silent, and only looked their wants, we could not pass by.

Antelopes here are abundant; their flesh affords a grateful change from the monotony of camp diet. Wolves pay us an occasional nightly visit, but a shot from the revolver, always at hand, disperses them.

About one hundred miles from the Crossing brings us to Beaver Creek, a small, fresh-looking stream. On an island in the river near stands a lone tree, in the top of which is said to be placed the body of an Indian, distinguished by this mode of sepulchral honor. I approached as near as I could for the stream, but the branches intercepted my view. In thirty miles more we reach Fremont’s Orchard, a beautiful spot, noted as a camping-ground. Its name is indicative of the size and shape of the trees and the appearance of the grove from a distance…. For the last two hundred and fifty miles, I suppose all the timber in sight on the mainland would not cover one section. From this point the supply upon the river improves, though still scanty.

Edward Dunsha Steele's map of the South Platte River road from his diary.

William W. Salisbury was from Cleveland and set off on April 4^th, 1859 for the gold fields of Colorado. Salisbury would be one of the unsuccessful “go-backers” and returned along the South Platte River Road in August, 1859, just five months after setting out. Many of the prospectors of the time expected gold to be easily obtained in the Rockies and not many planned for the hard labor involved. Salisbury described his journey eastwards through the Fort Morgan area, noting as did Reverend Goode the Indian tree burial at the mouth of Beaver Creek:

FRIDAY 5TH AUGUST. We were on our way early this morning. traveled all the forenoon on a sandy desert without wood or water. Reached Fremont orchard about 6 ock [sic] this evening It is a beautiful grove of willow and popular [sic] camped one mile and a half below on good feed and timber. the mountains are but juts to be seen in the distance Pikes and Longs two peaks are to be seen.

SATURDAY 6TH This forenoon our road has been very sandy. reached Bijou crick at noon good grass and water. reached an Indian village of several thousand inhabitance [sic] and wandered through the village. camped 3 miles below on the river

SUNDAY 7TH Today is Sund[a]y but it does not seam [sic] as such to me. we are resting this forenoon. have been down to traid [sic] with the Indians have been traveling this afternoon have went 12 miles. no wood here of any consequence crossed Be[a]ver crick.

MONDAY 8TH We camped near the third station [Beaver station] last night were on our way early this morning. the mountains are lost to view here. the road is frequently very sandy. no wood scarcely here, but willow. Went over to an island in the river after flood wood and willow. discovered the remains of a de[a]d Ingen under a lone Cottonwood he had been hung in the tree after de[a]th with his robes and clothing all on he had decayed and fell to the ground… last night we passed some Indians on their way home from battle….

Photo of Sioux tree burial taken near Fort Laramie.

In the fall and winter months, travelers were few and the prospectors already in the mountains settled in for the winter, but come spring, travelers again set off for the gold fields.

Sources:

Smith, Duane A. (ed.), “Pikes Peak Fifty-Niner: The Diary of E. A. Bowen,” Colorado Magazine, 47(4), 1970 , p. 69-311 (p. 279).

Hafen, Le Roy Reuben, To the Pike's Peak Gold Fields, 1859 (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2004), p. 154-155.

Steele, Edward Dunsha, The Diary of Edward Dunsha Steele Across the Plains to Boulder, Colorado in the Year of 1859 (Boulder, CO: Johnson Publishing Co., 1960), p. ?.

Goode, William H., Outposts of Zion: With Limnings of Mission Life (Cincinnati, OH: Poe & Hitchcock, 1864), pp. 417-418.

Lindsey, David (ed.), “The Journal of an 1859 Pike's Peak Gold Seeker,” Kansas Historical Quarterlies, 22(4), 1956, p. 305-320, (p. 336). Retrieved from http://www.kancoll.org/khq/1956/56_4_lindsey.htm

Photo Credit: Sioux tree burial. Photo at National Archives. www.friendslittlebighorn.com/custerslaststand.htm

Ed Chase: Gambling King at Fort Morgan

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Edward Chase.

Edward Chase, Denver’s gambling king had a short history with the military and Junction Station as Fort Morgan was at the time and the Sand Creek Massacre. In August 1864, he volunteered with Company F of the 3^rd Colorado Cavalry. The men in the militia were called “100 day’s men” because their enlistment in the militia lasted for 100 days.

The 3^rd Colorado Cavalry was officially organized on August 20, 1864 and the last men were mustered out on December 31, 1864.

In August 1864, the overland trail stations at Valley Station (Sterling) and Junction Station (Fort Morgan) became military outposts formed to protect settlers and emigrants traveling along the South Platte River Road and Company F marched for the Junction on September 13, 1864.

Captain Edward Chase, one of the original gold-seekers in Colorado and known as Denver’s gambling king and became a notorious leader of Denver’s underworld. By all accounts, he was handsome and influential. Thomas Noel described the man:

The first “czar” of Denver’s gamblers was tall, hawk-faced Edward Chase. Chase came to Denver at the age of twenty-two in 1860. For the next half century he made it his business to organize the underworld into a voting bloc whose support could be traded for protection of his numerous sporting houses. “Big Ed” Chase had Denver’s first billiard table hauled across the plains…. Tall, immaculately dressed Ed Chase perched on a high stool with a shotgun across his elbow, surveying the room. Chase prided himself on keeping an orderly house…

Edward Chase.
Photo in Denver Public Library. Published in From the Grave: A Roadside Guide to Colorado's Pioneer Cemeteries.

Ed Chase and Company F would be at the Junction for only two months. In November, the unmounted Company L made up of men from Gilpin County replaced the mounted Company F at the Junction. Company F marched for Sand Creek. Nearly 100 days had passed since the militia was formed and few of the soldiers had seen action, lending the regiment the nickname the “Bloodless Third.” Almost exactly 100 days from when the first volunteers joined the militia, the “Bloodless Third” would turn into the “Bloody Third.”

The Sand Creek Massacre of November 29, 1864 happened near what is now Eads, Colorado on the banks of the Big Sandy Creek, approximately 130 miles southeast of Fort Morgan. The U.S. military under the command of Colonels Chivington and Shoup attacked a peaceful Cheyenne village killing hundreds of Indians. For more information about the battle itself, see the post “Fort Morgan and the Sand Creek Massacre” Though many officers were outraged by the battle, at first the military and Colonel Chivington were treated as heroes. When the sketchy news of the battle first reached Denver, there seemed to be a general rejoicing. “Bully for the Colorado Boys!” wrote the Rocky Mountain News:

This noted, needed whipping of the “red skins,” by our “First Indian Expedition,”…was the chief subject of comment and glorification through the town today. The members of the Third, and First…”cleaned out” the confederated savages on Sand Creek, have won for themselves and their commanders…eternal gratitude of dwellers on these plains.

The return of the Third Regiment boys from the victorious field of Indian warfare was the grand feature of to-day [December 22]…. Headed by the First Regiment Band, and by Colonels Chivington and Shoup, Lieut. Col. Bowen and Major Sayr, the rank and file of the “bloody Thirdsters” made a most imposing procession…. As the “bold sojer boys” passed along, the sidewalks and the corner stands were thronged with citizens saluting their old friends: and the fair sex took advantage of the opportunity, wherever they could get it, of expressing their admiration for the gallant boys who donned the regimentals for the purpose of protecting the women of the country, by ridding it of red-skins….

Although covered o’er with dust, and suffering from the hardships of the tented field, the boys looked bully, and the general appearance of the whole was soldierly and service-like.

Chase, however, did not appear in the mood to celebrate. Muster rolls indicate that he resigned his commission on November 29 – the day of the massacre - and seven days short of his 100 day enlistment. There’s no mention of when or why he resigned and Chase is not mentioned in any of the subsequent reports of the battle nor did he testify before Congress as many dissenting officers did.

'The Sand Creek Massacre' by Robert Lindneux, 1936

We can only speculate on Chase’s quiet resignation especially as Company F of the 3rd Colorado Cavalry is hardly mentioned in the reports of the battle. This is not necessarily suspicious as the battle was chaotic and the company was placed under the command of Lt Col. Leavitt L. Bowen instead of their normal commander Col. George Shoup. Bowen's report of the battle written November 30, 1864 was less than enlightening:

I have the honor to enclose you the reports of the company commanders of the first battalion, commanded by myself, in the action of yesterday. I fully indorse all contained in these reports; all behaved well, each vieing with the other as to who could do the enemy the most injury. This, I think, can truly be said of the whole regiment. I was in position during the action to see most of the regiment, and did not see one coward.

Permit me to congratulate you upon the signal punishment meted out to the savages on yesterday, "who so ruthlessly have murdered our women and children," in the language of the colonel commanding, although I regret the loss of so many brave men.

The third regiment cannot any longer be called the "bloodless third." From the most reliable information, from actual count and positions occupied, I have no doubt that at least one hundred and fifty Indians were killed by my battalion. I cannot speak in terms of too high praise of all the officers and men under my command.

The war flag of this band of Cheyennes is in my possession, presented by Stephen Decatur, commissary sergeant of company C, who acted as my battalion adjutant.

There doesn't seem to be a report written by Ed Chase.

The man who would replace Ed Chase as captain of Company F, Joseph A. Foy seemed to have participated fully in the Sand Creek Massacre. According to news reports, Captain Joseph A. Foy opened an exhibit in 1865 to display his “trophies” from Sand Creek to the public including scalps and letters between Silas Soule and Joe A. Cramer indicate that officers including Colonel Bowen took body parts as trophies from the battlefield.

A month after the battle, the Daily Mining Journal reported:

A good many of the Third Regiment boys are returning to their old haunts. Some of them do no scruple to say that the big battle of Sand Creek was a cold-blooded massacre.... Many stories are told and incidents related by the actors in the bloody scene, which are too sickening to repeat.

It's unknown what Ed Chase experienced, but he seemed to anticipate the public outrage as details of the massacre became public. Before the year was out Congress there would undertake an investigation and Colonel Chivington would resign.

While Ed Chase did not publically speak out against the massacre (he reportedly did not like to talk about his experiences at Sand Creek) nor testify in Congress, his actions speak to his opinions.

Sources:

“Arrival of the Third Regiment – Grand March Through Town,” Rocky Mountain News, 22 December, 1864, p. 2.
Colorado's Legendary Lovers: Historic Scandals, Heartthrobs, and Haunting ...By Rosemary Fetter
“Troops in the Department of Kansas, Maj. Gen. Samuel R. Curtis, commanding,” in The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 41, Part 4 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1893), 375.
Forbes Parkhill, The Wildest of the West (New York: Holt, 1951) 66.
Thomas J. Noel, The City and the Saloon: Denver, 1858-1916 (Niwot, CO: University Press of Colorado, 1996), 37.
Raymond G. Carey, “The ‘Bloodless Third’ Regiment, Colorado Volunteer Cavalry,” Colorado Magazine 38 (1961): 275-300.
Carey, “The ‘Bloodless Third’ Regiment,” 275-300.
Big Indian Fight!,” Rocky Mountain News, December 7, 1864, p. 2.
“Arrival of the Third Regiment – Grand March Through Town,” Rocky Mountain News, December 22, 1864, p. 2.
Official Army Register of the Volunteer Force of the United States Army for the Years 1861, '62, '63, '64, '65, Volume 8: Territories of Washington, New Mexico, Nebraska, Colorado, Dakota… (Washington: Adjutant General’s Office, 1865), 26.
Daily Mining Journal January 4, 1865
Plundered Skulls and Stolen Spirits: Inside the Fight to Reclaim Native By Chip Colwell
Western Voices: 125 Years of Colorado Writing By Colorado Historical Society
Daily Mining Journal, December 30, 1864

Execution of Foster & Stone - 13th Missouri Cavalry

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During the 1860s when Fort Wardwell [Fort Morgan] was the most active at fighting the allied tribes, the fort earned some unwelcome notoriety. On January 8, 1866, two soldiers from the 13^th Missouri Cavalry stationed at Camp Wardwell were arrested for the murders of Isaac H. Augustus and F. H. Sluman, freighters working for Carney & Stevens out of Leavenworth, Kansas.

Privates Frank Foster and Henry Stone of Company E, 13^th Missouri Cavalry were arrested for the murders and brought to Denver for trial. The soldiers were found guilty and sentenced to be hanged. The details of the murders were reported as part of Franklin Foster’s confession reported in the newspaper on May 17^th:

To the People of Colorado:

I was born in Stoddard county, Missouri, on the 25^th day of February 1846. My parents are both dead – they died about thirteen years ago. I was an honest boy until I came to Colorado – accounted so by everybody, both women and men. I enlisted in the army July 1861, at Cape Girardeau, Mo. In the 12^th Missouri Cav. I consider myself as good a soldier as every took hold of the butt of a revolver. My regiment was consolidated with the 5^th Mo. Cav., and I afterwards enlisted as a veteran in the 13^th Mo. Cav. We came to Kansas (Ft. Zarah,) from there to Denver; from Denver to Camp Wardwell.

On the 5^th day of January last, about two o’clock in the evening, myself and Henry Stone started to Central City on horseback, we intended to desert – we struck out from camp taking a south west course. We bore in to the Platte river road, struck the Platte at Bijou creek. We went up the road about one mile. Stone and I talked a few minutes to Augustus, and Sluman, then we went up the road about one mile, then we turned back. I said to Mr. Stone, “I bet them men has got plenty of money.” Mr. Stone said “lets go for them.” I seconded the motion.

We came on down to where they was camped, we hitched our horses to their wagon, (Augustus and Sluman’s wagon). I asked Mr. Augustus if anything was broke, he said he had some horses broke loose the night before, he was hunting them that day. Henry Stone on my right in front of Sluman, Stone drew his revolver and was looking at Sluman and revolving the cylender [sic] in his hand. I knew what he aimed to do. I would have called the shots if I could. I drew my revolver I don’t know what delayed him in his shots that he could not shoot quicker, whether he was frightened of his revolver would not go off. I fired six shots while he was firing two.

I shot Augustus from the description the witness gave of the man. I am the man that killed Augustus. Mr. Stone shot Sluman; Sluman was on the ground before I shot at him. I then fired five shots at him. I hit him every time. Stone had hit Sluman before I fired at him. Either one of his shots would have killed him. Augustus was not hit with a slung shot or the butt of a pistol, neither was Sluman. Augustus was not dead when I left him; he raised up once. Neither of them spoke after the shots were fired. We searched the bodies; I myself got one hundred dollars in greenbacks out of the shirt pocket of Augustus; whether Stone got anything I don’t know…

When we two (Stone and myself,) left Camp Wardwell, we started to Central City proposing to make money as we could get it. We had a good horse a piece, saddle and equipments. Henry Stone had one revolver; I had two. We had been drinking. After the murder I wanted to go to the States. I knew he would be suspected also. Next day I told Stone he would be arrested before the sun set. So we were. He said he did not believe we would; he said they could not do anything with us, if they did arrest us.

Stone was with me when we met Mr. Bouter, John Sterling and Louis Summer, about two miles from the wagons. Stone was badly frightened; as for myself, I was not frightened a bit. I looked at my revolver once, the revolver that I had shot out, it was empty; putting it back and taking the second thought, (my intention was to kill all three) I thought I would not, but would leave the country. We talked a few minutes with the three men; then they went up and we went down the road, stopped at camp until after we were arrested. When I left camp I had between forty and forty five dollars. Stone told me that he had only $7. When he was arrested he had thirteen dollars and some odd cents.

Last night, the 15^th day of May, I had a conversation with Stone in regard to the murder. Stone asked was I prepared to meet my God. I told him I thought I was. I asked him was he. He said he was not. I asked him, didn’t he think he could be before he was executed. He said he didn’t know. Says he “Franklin, there is only one thing can save my life. I asked him what it was. He said for me to confess that I done the murder alone, and that he was not about, Says I Stone, I can’t do it. I told him I would have to tell the truth when I came to die. Says I, Stone, I didn’t think you would ask me any such question. You know you are as deep in the mire as I am in the mire. He said he knowed [sic] he was. He said that none of the people in Denver believed he had any hand in it – he allowed if I confessed, it would clear him. I told him both being guilty of the murder, I was willing to die upon the grounds and he ought to, for we had killed innocent men….

The confession of Henry Stone was also recorded, though his story was markedly different. He denied his part in the Augustus and Sluman murders, though he confessed to three others:

I was born on the 30^th day of January 1843, in the town of Perryville, Perry County, Missouri. I left home at the age of sixteen – went to Illinois – left home on account of getting in a fight with my brother. I thought I had killed him. I took to gambling and horse racing – got in a fuss with a man named Johnson over a game of cards. I followed him about a mile from town and killed him, by shooting him with a revolver….

I took from this man’s person seven hundred dollars…[and] joined the Thirteenth Missouri cavalry; staid [sic] at Rolla Missouri, about five months, I killed a man whose name I do not know, near the town of Dillon. I killed for his money….

We then received marching orders and went onto the Platte road. We were stationed at Camp Wardwell, myself and Franklin Foster on the fifth day of January, 1866, left Camp Wardwell to hunt for antelope. When from five to eight miles above camp, on the cut-off road, we parted company; I went about due south, Foster going west or north of west. We were separated about two hours. I started back towards Foster, met him about a mile from some wagons, which I could see from the place that I met Foster. Foster said to me, “let us desert from the army.” I told him I would’nt [sic] do it.

While I was away from Foster I heard nine or ten shots fired in the direction of the wagons. Foster was coming from the wagons when I came up to him. Foster had two revolvers on him at the time. One of which belonged to Thos. Rhodes, which Foster gave to him when we got to camp. On the next morning I was informed for the first time that two men had been murdered up the Platte river. This was the first that I knew of the murder. About two o’clock in the afternoon Mr. Foster told me that we were accused of the murder. I told him that I did not believe it, he said I would find it out before night. On the first night that we came to Denver Mr. Foster told me that he did kill the two men, but that he would never own it – that he might be killed, but he should not own it up. I have often requested him to prove my innocence, but he always said that he would not, and said that if I said a word about it that he would tell the court that we was both present when the two men were killed….

I never received one cent of the money and do not know how much money Foster got….

Both Foster and Stone were hung publicly on May 24, 1866 outside of Denver along Cherry Creek in front of about 3,000 spectators. The execution was one of the last public hangings in Denver and it was reported in graphic detail:

The gallows in Denver likely looked similar to the one in this image. John Brown ascending the gallows at Harper's Ferry, Virginia on December 2nd, 1859.

Execution of Franklin Foster and Henry Stone for the murder of Isaac H. Augustus and --- Sluman.

To-day, the 24^th of May, Franklin Foster, 20 years of age, born in Stoddard county, Missouri, and Henry Slone 23 years of age, born in Perryville, Perry county, Missouri, both members of the 13^th Missouri Cavalry, in obedience to the sentence of Judge Gale, of the District Court, were executed in this city for the murder of Isaac H. Augustus and ___ Sluman, near the Junction House on the Platte, about 100 miles east of this place, on January 5^th, 1866. Foster has made a free and full confession for his guilt, and that implicates Stone. Stone also made a confession, denying any connection with the murder for which he is executed, but admits his guilt of the commission of four other murders of men in the States.

All the forenoon, vehicles of all descriptions have been arriving from the country, loaded with men, women, and children, doubtless drawn here to witness the execution.

The Gallows, with all its horrid paraphernalia, was erected at the foot of the low bluff overlooking Cherry creek; near the southern boundary of the city, in plain view of standing room for thousands upon thousands of spectators. Adjoining the fatal engine of death a platform was raised for the accommodation of officers, clergy, and members of the press.

The prisoners.

Foster has been attended, until yesterday by Rev. Mr. Potter, a Baptist minister but at the prisoner’s request Rev. Father Macheboeuf, Catholic, was then called, and has since been ministering to his spiritual welfare until this forenoon when Rev. Mr. Clark, a Baptist clergyman was called. Rev. Mr. McClure was ministering to stone. We are informed by Mr. Haskel, the Jailor, that they both slept soundly last night. This morning Stone ate a hearty breakfast, but Foster declined eating until consultation with his spiritual adviser.

At one o’clock the prisoners were taken from jail in a close carriage, to the place of execution accompanied by Deputy Sheriff Baily, Deputy U. S. Marshal Earl, and Jailor Haskel. We are told that on the way they showed the utmost indifference… each other upon their imending fate. They were neatly dressed in a new suit of clothes [illegible].

At the Gallows. They [Foster and Stone] up the steps without a quivering muscle, and indeed preserved the same stoical indifference until the final trap dropped from under them. They were accompanied to the platform by Sheriff Sopris and officers, Revs. McClure, Potter and Clark. Rev. Mr. McClure read some passages of scripture, the hymn commencing “Rock of ages”...

Question. Do you still adhere to your published confession?

Ans. As far as main it is all true!

Questions of the same purpose were propounded to Stone, and answered in the same manner. In reply to the questions of Rev. McClure, Stone had nothing further to say in relation to his confession. In 4 minutes after the drop fell, the pulsations of Stone were yet distinct, while those of Foster were a trifle stronger than natural. In 6 minutes the heart of Stone had nearly ceased beating. In 7 minutes they were both perfectly unconscious and dying fast. In 10 minutes the straps were removed from their arms and at 9 minutes to 2 after they had hung 17 minutes they were both pronounced dead and were cut down. There was probably not less than 3000 spectators present, who were very quiet a more orderly and well behaved crowd was never seen together in any country. Not a loud remark or an action calculated to mar the solemnity of the occasion from any one.

Lieut. Williams was on the ground with his company, “B” of the 5^th U. S. which surrounded a small space around the gallows and the space enclosing the coffins. After the bodies were cut down the vast crowd dispersed in the same orderly manner that they had witnessed the soldiers vindication of the laws….

Sources:

January 27, 1866, The Missouri Republican, p. 3.

“Road Agents on the Platte: Robbing and Murder!,” Rocky Mountain News Weekly, January 10, 1866, p. 3.

“Prisoners Brought In,” Rocky Mountain News, January 30, 1866, p. 4.

“Prisoners Sentenced,” Rocky Mountain News, April 28, 1866, p. 4.“Confessions of Stone and Foster,” Rocky Mountain News, May 17, 1866, p. 1.

“Execution of Franklin Foster and Henry Stone for the Murder of Isaac H. Augustus and --- Sluman,” Rocky Mountain News, May 24, 1866, p. 1.

Fort Morgan Burns: Hostilities Continue

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On May 18, 1868, the flag was lowered for the last time at Fort Morgan and the cannon fired a last salute. Captain Powell and the 4th U. S. Infantry marched to Fort Laramie which would become the unit's home base. The fort lay amongst buffalo and buffalo grass and waited; the sod fort melting back into the plains.

Just months after Fort Morgan was abandoned, Indians attacked Brush’s ranch, killing William Brush, his cousin Jared Conroy and a hired man Halstead Olson Dunning and stampeding stock. With the fort deserted, the ranchers were on their own just as they had been in the early 1860s at the start of the Indian hostilities in the area.

Did the military leave too soon?

The military was now based at Fort Laramie, so after the Brush ranch was attacked, the men of the region formed their own militia and took off after the Indians. The militia consisted of about forty men and included Holon Godfrey, Sam Ashcraft, and Elbridge Gerry. They caught up with the Indians near Latham. Five of the Indians were reportedly killed and fifteen wounded. The New York Tribune reported:

A dispatch from Latham to The Courier reports that on Saturday the Indians were in strong force at Fremont’s Orchard. Sam Ashcraft with a party of volunteers pursued them up the Platte River and being found by Godfrey’s detachment they fought the Indians killing four of them. There are 130 volunteers in the field and reinforcements are gathering from all directions.

Provisions and ample supplies of arms and ammunition have been sent to them. The shipments of gold from Central City last week amounts to $40,000. The Indians had driven off 20 head of horses and mules near Cooper’s Creek…Denver dispatches says a family named Neff, numbering nine persons, residing at Kiowa, were found murdered on Saturday.

Seventh Cavalry Charging Black Kettle's Village 1868.

A more complete account was given by Mr. D. B. Bailey who described the attack and subsequent battle:

On the twenty-fourth a small party of the savages stampeded the herd of Mr. Brush on one side of the river, and his herd on the other, driving off all the their horses, numbering twenty-four, and killing four head of cattle. Some of them then dashed upon William Brush and two of his men, who were hitching up a team near the house, preparatory to starting for a load of hay, and killed all three of them, shooting each three times, tomahawking and scalping them. In addition to these depredations and murders, they stole four horses from Messrs. Clones and Innes, and ten from Capt. Oram.

About dusk, of the twenty-seventh, a party of settlers numbering sixty-four having been organized with Mr. Balloy as leader, started in pursuit of the Indians, coming up with them at sunrise of the twenty-eighth, within ten miles of Latham. Mr. Baily thinks, from the appearance of the trail and this party that the main body had gone on, was traveling through with tepees, families, and all, that this band was a sort of foreging outfit, rear guard, etc.

They had no stock with them at any rate, numbered forty, were all mounted and armed, and though at first taken by surprise, their chief soon set them with his rod to performing their one peculiar military evolution, accompanying an attack, best illustrated by the movement of pieces in a kaleidoscope, or of dancers in a cotillion, the general effect being the forming of a moving circle of fire around the party attacked. Mr. Bailey sprang to the ground, drew a bead on the man with the rod, and dropped him dead. From that moment they fell into confusion, abandoned their attacking tactics, and only seemed anxious to escape.

Retreating, they would fire back over their shoulders, not attempting to make a stand. They scattered, too, like a flock of ducks, so that, by noon, the fight having commenced at sunrise, they had fled ten miles and covered ten square miles of country. Five of them were killed, fifteen wounded, and the horses of the killed captured.

The general direction of their retreat was toward Kiowa, crossing the Platte at Stony Point, Kempton’s old ranch. None of the whites was hit or hurt, and the pursuit was called off at noon to reorganize and procure more ammunition. There is now hope, we think, that Major Downing and the Bijou and Kiowa settlers will get a lick at the marauders.

Isolated Indian attacks continued and on December 21, 1868, the abandoned fort was burned as was John Iliff’s ranch at Fremont’s Orchard. The Rocky Mountain News reported the story on January 15th:

On Sunday, January 3, Mr. Gearry, who lives on or near Crow creek, came up to Latham and gave information that a band of twenty seven Indians had appeared in his neighborhood, and had driven off twenty head of his ponies, but that his wife’s father (an Indian) had returned with eight of them, saying that the ponies had been taken by the young men whom he could not control.

A company of seventeen men was at once organized, and Gearry placed in command. They rode to his place, where they arrived at seven o’clock on the morning of the fourth. They then went up Crow creek about twelve miles, where they got a reinforcement of ten men, and struck out across the prairies for the Platte, reaching the river at old camp Sanborn, where they found Iliff’s cattle camp burned and destroyed.

Camping for the night, on Tuesday morning they took the trail down the river, and passing Iliff’s herd, found that one hundred head had been driven off by the Indians. Arriving at the Junction [Fort Morgan] about three o’clock in the afternoon, the party camped for dinner, and then followed the trail eight miles further, where they crossed the river at Murray’s old ranch. Here the Indians had killed an ox, and tried to get the stock across the river, but failing to do so, they went over with the ponies, and were obliged to leave the cattle. Thinking it of no use to go any further, on Wednesday morning they started homeward.

Though hostilities with the Cheyenne in northeastern Colorado mostly ended with their defeat at Summit Springs July 11, 1869, sporadic attacks would continue until the various Indian tribes were moved onto reservations. As late as 1876, just weeks before the Battle of Little Bighorn, Sioux attacked ranchers in the Fort Morgan area. The Cheyenne Daily Leader had the story:

Sioux Indians...attacked a cattle round-up at Fremont’s Orchard, about 80 miles down the Platte, killing 15 men and driving off the stock. The settlers in the vicinity of the reported raid have left their ranches and taken refuge in the nearest settlements.J. W. Iliff came in on last evening’s D. P. express. He stated that Mr. Wakeman arrived Denver Thursday morning from down the Platte, with the report that the Weld county round-up had been attacked by Indians while near the ranch of Lyman Cole, at Fremont’s Orchard, about 33 miles below Greeley. Fifteen men are reported killed, three of whom were in the employ of Mr. Cole, and three of Mr. Iliff’s men…. Every one was very frightened…. A man named Hening…says that the ranches in the vicinity are being deserted…

The railroads were moving in and the tribes were being relocated onto reservations. Towns were already beginning to form on the plains and the settlers' minds turned to agriculture.

Sources:

Shwayder, Chronology of Weld County, Colorado, 1836-1983, 45.
“Indians. Murders and Depredations at Latham…,” Rocky Mountain News, August 29, 1868: 1.
“Untitled,” Rocky Mountain News, 2 January, 1869, p. 4.
NY Tribune sept 2, 1868 p. 1
“Indians,” Rocky Mountain News, 15 January, 1869, p. 4.
“Reported Killing of 15 Men by Sioux,” Cheyenne Daily Leader, 17 June, 1876, p. 3.
“Indians,” Rocky Mountain News, 15 January, 1869, p. 4.
"Reported Killing of 15 Men by Sioux,” Cheyenne Daily Leader, 17 June, 1876, p. 3.
Photo Source: Harper's Weekly v. 12, 1868 Dec. 19, p. 804. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Seventh_Cavalry_Charging_Black_Kettle_s_Village_1868.jpg

Artist Thomas Worthington Whittredge at Fort Morgan

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In 1866, General John Pope, commander of the Military Division of the Missouri which then included the Colorado Territory, set off on a tour of the Plains, the Rocky Mountains and New Mexico. During his trip he would stay at Fort Wardwell on June 22nd through the 24th. The expedition was recorded by Colonel James Meline in his book Two Thousand Miles on Horseback. Meline wrote eloquently about the fort (see post "In View of the Mountains").

Also accompanying General Pope on this expedition was the landscape painter Thomas Worthington Whittredge. He was as enthralled as Meline with the plains and a number of his landscapes are set along the Platte River.

Whittredge (1820-1910) was an American artist of the Hudson River Schoo. He would travel over the plains to the Rocky Mountains three times in all to paint, but he specifically recalled his first trip through Colorado and New Mexico with General Pope in his autobiography:

I had never seen the plains or anything like them. They impressed me deeply. I cared more for them than for the mountains, and very few of my western pictures have been produced from sketches made in the mountains, but rather from those made on the plains with the mountains in the distance. Whoever crossed the plains at that period, notwithstanding its herds of buffalo and flocks of antelope, its wild horses, deer and fleet rabbits, could hardly fail to be impressed with its vastness and silence and the appearance everywhere of an innocent, primitive existence.

There was the nomad and the rattlesnake to be taken into consideration, and they both occasionally made some noise.

We usually made a march of thirty-three miles a day, which was performed between daybreak and one o’clock in the afternoon. On arriving in camp I gave my horse to an orderly and went at once to the wagon for my sketch box which was usually covered deep with camp furniture, but I always got it out, and while the officers were lounging in their tents and awaiting their dinners, I went to make a sketch, seldom returning before sundown...

Whittredge painting Indian Encampment on the Platte

General Pope’s impressions of the fort are not recorded, but he must have been as impressed as his traveling companions. He immediately ordered that Fort Wardwell be renamed in honor of his friend Christopher A. Morgan who had died suddenly earlier in the year (see post Colonel Christopher A. Morgan). Fort Morgan was born.

View a number of Thomas Worthington Whittredge's paintings of the plains below.

Adding the YouTube Player to your website

Sources:

James Florant Meline, Two Thousand Miles on Horseback (NY: Hurd and Houghton, 1867).
Thomas Worthington Whittredge, The Autobiography of Worthington Whittredge, 1820-1910 (New York: Arno Press, 1969).

Fort Morgan and Little Bighorn

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Fort Morgan featured little in the Indian Wars of the 1860s and 1870s. The purpose of the garrison was to provide protection for emigrants to and from the gold fields of Colorado. The fort was never attacked, as such though there were a number of skirmishes on the prairies. The fort was abandoned in 1868, with the base of operations moving to Fort Laramie, Wyoming so little seems to link the fort with one of the major battles of the age – Little Bighorn. The link is limited, but it is there.

In 1866, the 7^th U. S. Cavalry (often known as Custer’s regiment) was formed. The purpose of this regiment was to fight the various tribes still active in the west. The companies were dispatched to various forts including Fort Morgan. Company L arrived for duty by the end of the year under the command of Captain Michael V. Sheridan (brother to famed General Phillip Sheridan). The company would remain at the fort until June of the following year during which time Colonel Custer (as he was then) chased Indians across the plains. This was a turbulent time for the company with a great many desertions and evidence of internal strife. As soon as the company moved from Fort Morgan, Captain Sheridan was recalled to Washington to serve as aide de camp for his brother and never again held a command.

Nine years later (June 25, 1876), Company L would fight with Custer’s column at the Battle of Little Bighorn.

General Custer on horseback with his U. S. Army troops in battle with Native American Lakota Sioux, Crow, Northern, and Cheyenne, Little Bighorn Battlefield, June 25, 1876, Little Bighorn River, Montana.
Entered according to act of Congress in the year 1876 by Seifert Gugler & Co. with the librarian of Congress at Washington D. C." File copied from http://digital.denverlibrary.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15330coll22/id/35616

The general term of enlistment was only five years, so most of the men originally serving in Company L had long since been mustered out of service, but a few long-serving men remained to fight alongside Custer.

William G. Abrams, Private is listed on the original muster rolls for Company L, 7^th U. S. Cavalry. He is listed with company L (enlisting – or reenlisting – in 1871) at Fort Morgan. Abrams survived Little Bighorn and died May 28, 1901 in Sioux City, IA.

Joseph Kretschmer [or Kretchmer] was also listed on the original muster rolls for Company L and was stationed in Fort Morgan. Serving with Company D at the time of Little Bighorn, he was wounded but survived and died April 19, 1928 in Washington DC.

Matthew Maroney was also listed on the muster rolls for Company L for May and June of 1867, during which time the company was stationed at Fort Morgan. Maroney was transferred into the company and it is unclear whether he joined the company before or after moving on from Fort Morgan. Maroney served with Company H during the battle. He survived and died December 15, 1880.

The final soldier who served at Fort Morgan and fought at the Battle of Little Bighorn, Edmond D. Tessier died with Custer on June 25, 1876.

As mentioned earlier, Michael V. Sheridan was not serving with his company when it marched with Custer, but serving as aide to his brother. In 1877, Sheridan would be sent to the battlefield with Company I in an attempt to retrieve remains of those killed at the battle and properly bury remains that could not be identified. The bodies of thirteen soldiers, including General Custer’s, were exhumed and sent home for burial.

-----

Sources:

Friends of the Little Bighorn Battlefield

www.friendslittlebighorn.com/7th%20Cav%20Muster%20Rolls.htm

Ronald Hamilton Nichols. In Custer's Shadow: Major Marcus Reno

Jerome A. Greene. Stricken Field: The Little Bighorn Since 1876

Desertions from Fort Morgan

2012-04-09T09:58:00.000-05:00

At times, desertion was a major problem in the military. By no means a daily occurrence, monthly reports note how many soldiers – generally enlisted men – deserted during the month.

Notes were also made of soldiers captured and placed under arrest, sometimes court martialed, sometimes placed back into service. As can be seen on the following chart, desertions were relatively rare with occasional spikes (one of which, that of January, 1867, was detailed in the book In View of the Mountains).

The spike in desertions in September, 1865 seems an anticipation of a general mustering out of troops stationed at the fort. Companies A, D & G, 1^st Colorado Cavalry left the fort in October and were mustered out in November; Companies G & H, 3^rd U. S. Volunteer Infantry and Company B, 6^th U. S. Volunteer Infantry also left the fort in October and were mustered out in November; and Company D, 1^st Michigan Cavalry was released from duty on October 5, 1865. The smaller spike in June, 1866 could also be explained by the anticipated mustering out of Companies C, D, & E of the 21^st New York Cavalry stationed at the fort – the last of the Civil War units, but not all deserters in this month were members of the 21^st New York Cavalry.

Court Martial - 18th U. S. Infantry

In June, 1866 the regular army took over the post with the arrival of the 18^th U. S. Infantry under the command of Major Lyman M. Kellogg. One reason desertions were common in the west was the draw of the mountains – and the gold that might be found there. Once soldiers came within sight of the mountains, the temptation for some was too great and they deserted - heading west.

On June 14^th, 1866 three privates from Company D of the 18^th U. S. Infantry, James M. Lane, William F. Smith, and Orange D. McLain, deserted taking with them horses, saddles, bridles, and rifles. The deserters were pursued and captured 18miles west of Camp Collins.

The soldiers’ court martial coincided with the visit to Fort Wardwell of General John Pope and his entourage. The court martial was convened by the General himself and sitting in judgment were Brigadier General John W. Davidson, Major James Sawyer, Captain Frank H. Phipps, 1^st Lieutenant Joseph Hale, and 2^nd Lieutenant J. N. Wheelan with Major James F. Meline serving as Judge Advocate. The men were charged with desertion and theft with an additional charge of Disobedience of Orders levied at Private Smith as he had been charged with guarding the stables on the night of the desertion.

The soldiers plead guilty on all charges and were found guilty by the court. The sentence for Privates Lane and McLain was forfeiture of pay, a dishonorable discharge, and ten years of hard labor served at a prison in Jefferson City, Missouri. Private Smith was sentenced “to be shot to death with musketry”. Private Smith’s sentence was later commuted to ten years of hard labor also to be served in Jefferson City, Missouri.

Mass Desertion - 7th U. S. Cavalry

On January 14, 1867, almost immediately after Captain Sheridan took command of Fort Morgan, all hell broke loose. Thirty soldiers under Sheridan's command deserted en masse stealing horses and heading south along the Cut-off, robbing a stagecoach along the way. Though desertions were a common occurrence, losing 30 soldiers at once was uncommon.

Contrary to news reports, the men didn’t appear to be traveling together, but in groups of 2 or 3. Also contrary to the myth that built up around these deserters, about a third of the men were re-captured some returning to service. The deserting men can be gleaned from the muster rolls of the 7^th U S Cavalry, Company L:


Corp. William G. Abrams	Pvt. Clement F. Ames	Pvt. Joseph Arthurs
Pvt. James Anderson	Pvt. Adolphus M. Bremer	Pvt. Peter Dyke
Pvt. Nicholas Fleming	Corp. George W. Galindo	Corp. Philip Gleason
Sgt. Don A. Griswold	Corp. Samuel W. Harmer	Pvt. Cristopher Hoff
Pvt. John Kelly	Pvt. Joseph Kretschmer	Pvt. Joseph Lemons
Pvt. Couger Monroe	Pvt. John McCuskey	Pvt. Lawrence Murrey
Pvt. William Mathews	Pvt. John Owen	Pvt. George Patterson
Corp. Samuel Ray	Pvt. Henry H. Roberts	Pvt. John H. Scooley
Pvt. Decatur Simpson	Pvt. Henry Snider	Pvt. George W. Stephens
Sgt. Esi D. Woodbury	Pvt. Joseph Young	Pvt. Charles Spaine*
		* Unclear if Pvt. Spaine deserted

John Kelly and William Abrams were both arrested on January 25 and Peter Dyke, George Stephens, and Joseph Kretschmer on January 26^th. The following week, Joseph Lemons was arrested. Henry Snider was arrested in February and on April 5^th, Samuel Ray, Decatur Simpson, and Joseph Young were arrested near Fort Wallace, Kansas, later to be joined by Couger Monroe. Some of the men returned to service (Dyke, Kelly, Snider, Young) and even re-enlisted (Abrams and Kretschmer) and were with their Company – and Custer – at the Battle of Little Bighorn nearly ten years later. A few escapted from confinement and re-deserted (Lemons, Monroe, Ray, Simpson, and Stephens) . There is no trace of the remaining deserters who either were able to effect their escape likely changing their names or perishion on the cold winter plains.

Sources:

National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington, D.C.; Returns from U.S. Military Posts 1800-1916. Microfilm Serial: M617; Microfilm Roll: 808
National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington, D.C.; national archives record group 153: Records of the Judge Advocate General’s Office (Army), Entry 15: Court-Martial Case Files, 1809-94. 7E3: 14/17/6. Box #2136; Private James M. Lane, Company D, 18^th U. S. Infantry (6/1866). Court-Martial Case File #00-1648
M. V. Sheridan to Chauncy McKeever, January 17, 1867, Bloedorn Research Center, Fort Morgan Museum (Fort Morgan, Colorado).
Muster Rolls of the 7^th U S Cavalry, Company L

Troops at the Fort

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Federal troops arrived in Fort Morgan (or Post of Junction as it was first called) in May, 1865 following a winter of attacks by the allied tribes (Arapahoe, Cheyenne, and Sioux). The Civil War was winding down and soldiers became available to man the post.

The 1st Colorado Cavalry was joined at the post by companies of the 3rd, 5th and 6th U.S. Volunteer Infantry, consisting of captured Confederate soldiers who volunteered for duty in the west in preference to imprisonment, and a company of the 1st Michigan Cavalry. More troops would arrive by the end of the year including the 13th Missouri Cavalry and the 21st New York Cavalry and for a time, nearly 400 men (along with more than 200 horses and 38 civilian employees) were stationed at the small fort.

Post returns were submitted tri-monthly (every 10 days) and monthly by each military post and are available through the National Archives. These returns are detailed reports and provide a concise description of the companies stationed at post, number of men (present, absent, equipped, etc.), officers (present and absent), communications received, and at times information about civilian employees, notes about deserters, arrests, deaths, and troops casually at post, and even the number of drills completed during the month.

The first post return for Fort Morgan was submitted on May 10, 1865 listing as present 25 men of Co. A, 1st Colorado Cavalry, 33 men of Co. G, 3rd U.S. Vol Infantry, and 28 men of Co. H, 3rd U.S. Vol Infantry. The post at that time was commanded by Capt. Thomas Kenny of the 3rd U.S. Volunteer Infantry.

Troops at Fort Morgan were sometimes reported to a regimental headquarters (e.g., Fort Laramie or Camp Collins), but for some troops, Fort Morgan was headquarters. Fort Morgan became the regimental headquarters for the 13th Missouri Cavalry in October, 1865 with the arrival of Companies B, C, E, & H and the regimental commander Col. Austin A. King. Valley Station (near Sterling) was first listed as an out-post of Fort Morgan on the December 10, 1865 return. This post consisted of 28 men under the command of Lt. James M. Thornton. Valley Station continued to be listed on post returns through March, 1866.

Drawing by Frederic Remington "Protecting a Wagon Train" published in The Milwaukee Journal, March 21, 1864 with the caption "Galvanized Yankees guard a wagon train crossing the plains"

When the last of the Civil War troops were mustered out, Fort Morgan remained a minor outpost for the military especially the 7th U.S. Cavalry (at a time when Custer was in the area fighting bands of Cheyenne) and the 18th U.S. Cavalry whose job it was to protect the building of the railroads. But, with the Indian War moving from the area, troops were moved elsewhere. For the last year, only one company of the 4th U.S. Infantry, consisting of under 100 men, were stationed at the fort.

Source: National Archives and Records Administration (NARA); Washington, D.C.; Returns from U.S. Military Posts 1800-1916. Microfilm Serial: M617; Microfilm Roll: 808

Early Views of the Mountains

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Early travelers through the Fort Morgan area write of long miles of prairie, huge horse-flies, and buffalo – thousands and thousands of buffalo. Sometimes these travelers encountered Indians and sometimes they did not, but nearly all rejoiced at their first view of the mountains which occurred around the Fort Morgan area.

Stephen H. Long’s party arrived in the Fort Morgan area on June 27^th or 28^th 1820 and camped on the night of June 30^th just west of Fort Morgan. Edwin James, a member of Long’s expedition, wrote of his first view of the Rocky Mountains and of the prairies:

…On the 30^th we left the encampment at our accustomed early hour, and at eight o’clock were cheered by a distant view of the Rocky Mountains. For some time we were unable to decide whether what we saw were mountains, or banks of cumulous clouds skirting the horizon, and glittering in the reflected rays of the sun. It was only by watching the bright parts, and observing that their form and position remained unaltered, that we were able to satisfy ourselves they were indeed mountains.

They were visible from the lowest part of the plain, and their summits were, when first discovered, several degrees above our horizon….we might have seen them from a greater distance had it not been for the want of transparency in the atmosphere…. Snow could be seen on every part of them which was visible above our horizon….the heat of the sun began to be felt, such quantities of vapour were seen to ascend from every part of the plain, that all objects at a little distance, appeared magnified, and variously distorted….

A herd of bisons, at the distance of a mile, seemed to be standing in a pool of water; and what appeared to us the reflected image was as distinctly seen as the animal itself. Illusions of this kind are common in the African and Asiatic deserts….

Towards evening the air became more clear, and our view of the mountains was more satisfactory…. We soon remarked a particular part of the range divided into three conic summits, each apparently of nearly equal altitude. This we concluded to be the point designated by Pike as the highest peak…. As we were about to encamp some of the party went in pursuit of a herd of bisons…

July 1^st….We left our camp at a very early hour, and travelling over a tract differing in no respect but its greater barrenness from that passed on the preceding day. We halted to dine at the distance of sixteen and a half miles. Many acres of this plain had not vegetation enough to communicate to the surface the least shade of green; a few dwarfish sunflowers and grasses…now entirely withered and brown….

A striking feature of that part of the plain country, we were now passing is formed by innumerable antheaps, rising from twelve to eighteen inches above the common level of the surface. They occur with some uniformity, at intervals of about twenty feet… We travelled this day twenty-seven miles, directly towards the base of the mountains, but they appeared almost as distant in the evening as they had done in the morning…

"Distant View of the Rocky Mountains" 1820 painting by Samuel Seymour, the painter on Stephen H. Long's expedition.

In 1835, the U.S. military sent Colonel Henry Dodge and the 1^st Dragoons to explore the region and meet with native tribes. The Dragoons travelled along the South Platte and entered the Fort Morgan area in mid-July, camping at Fort Morgan on July 16^th. An officer in Dodge’s Dragoons, Lieutenant Colonel Kearny, chronicled the march and noted the first view of the mountains in the Fort Morgan area:

…15^th. Marched twenty miles in a directon S. 70 W. Crossed a serpentine creek of considerable size; entered upon a high prairie, and came to an old deserted Indian camp, supposed to have been lately occupied by the Arepahas. The poles of the medicine lodge were still standing, and some of the emblems of their worship such as buffalo heads, painted arrows, etc.

After we had encamped, towards night, the clouds which had been lowering around the western horizon cleared away, and discovered to us a beautiful bird’s eye view of the Rocky mountains. This sight was hailed with joy by the whole command. We saw the end of the march – the long-wished-for object of all our hopes. They at first resembled white conical clouds, laying along the edge of the horizon. The rays of a setting sun upon their snow-clad summits gave to them a beautiful and splendid appearance…

Captain Lemuel Ford also kept a journal of the expedition and he, too wrote of the thrill of seeing the mountains for the first time:

Wednesday 15^th of July We traveled about ten miles South 65 West & ten miles South 75 West Crosed [sic] a deep revene [sic] three or four times running from the South to the river Cloudy thunder & threatening rain until evening when the clouds disappeared & after we encampted [sic] on the second Bottom of the river & began to look around we found ourselves in view of the high peaks of the Rocky Mountains covered with Snow lying South 85 di West we are now about 85 or 90 miles off

I have long heard of the Rocky Mountains & have a small view of them this eving [sic] for the first time in my life the river Platt that we are now encampted [sic] upon is much clearer & the water colder & not as wide as was a few days below rapid Current and about five or six hundred yards wide. This eving [sic] we have plenty of the best fat Buffalowe [sic] meat. Our command are in high spirits highly delighted with the prospect of being in a few days on the Rock Mountains.…

It would be more than a few days before the dragoons would meet the mountains.

Sources:

James, Edwin & Stephen Harriman Long. Account of an Expedition from Pittsburgh to the Rocky Mountains, Performed in the Years 1819, 1820, Volume 2 (London: A. & R. Spottiswoode, 1823), pp. 172-178.

Kearny. The Military and Naval Magazine of the United States Vol 6 no. 5 January, 1836. Dragoon Expedition – Indian Talks p. 317-329.

Pelzer, Louis, “Captain Ford's Journal of an Expedition to the Rocky Mountains,” The Mississippi Valley Historical Review, 12(4), 1926, pp. 550-579.

Early Explorers through Fort Morgan

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The early history of Fort Morgan is unclear, but there is some evidence that French and Spanish explorers and traders were in the vicinity of Fort Morgan. In the 17^th and 18^th centuries, the Spanish and French fought for control over most of the western United States. On this map made in 1663, Fort Morgan lies in the highlighted area just over the word “Apaches” along what is labeled as the Padouca River.

It is possible that the Spanish explored the region reaching as far north as the South Platte River as early as 1540. Coronado explored the area of New Mexico traveling north as far as Quivira, on the border between present-day Kansas and Nebraska, but there is some speculation that Coronado was farther west along the South Platte River.

One of the earliest known explorers into the area may have been Captain Pedro de Villasur who was sent from Santa Fe to evict French traders from Spanish land. Villasur’s exact route is unknown, but he encountered the South Platte River (called by the Río Jesús María by the Spanish) somewhere east of Fort Morgan in August, 1720. Four days later, Villasur’s expedition was wiped out by Pawnee camped near where the Platte River forks.

Twenty years later, Pierre and Paul Mallet, two French brothers would follow the Missouri River from near St. Louis and up the South Platte River into Spanish territory. At the point where the Platte River forks, they encountered Pawnee Indians and it is possible this was the same tribe who reportedly attacked Villasur. There is no direct evidence of this and the brothers did not note any problems and the Pawnee even suggested a route to the brothers. The route was southwesterly along a well-traversed route along the river. The Mallet’s journal was lost, but an official report of their journey remains:

On the 2^nd of June [1739], they [Mallet Brothers] came upon a river that they called the Platte, and seeing that it did not deviate from the route they had in mind, they followed it upstream along the right bank for a distance of 28 leagues, and at that point, they found that it made a fork with the River of the Padoucas which empties into the Platte.

Three days after reaching the River of the Padoucas, that is to say on the 13th of June, they turned left across said river and crossed a tongue of land. They camped on the 14^th on the other side of the river of the Hills which also feeds into the Platte.

On the 15^th and 16^th they continued to travel overland, and on the 17^th they came upon another river which they named the White Hills. During these three days, they crossed a region of plains in which they did not find enough wood to make a fire, and they relate in their journal that these plains extend to the mountains in the vicinity of Santa Fé.

The exact route is unclear, but apparently the Mallets travelled along the North Platte river for three days and then turned south over the arid prairies between the north and south forks of the Platte (River of the Padouca). After three days, they crossed the South Platte River, which the travelers called the “White Hills,” which could be the white bluffs north of Fort Morgan. Though it is unclear where the travelers crossed the South Platte River, their southwesterly course and the mention of the mountains possibly places the crossing near the Fort Morgan area. Later, the Mallets reported crossing two more rivers, possibly the forks of the Republican River and then coming to the Kansas (Arkansas) River and then to Santa Fé.

Though other sources suggest the Mallet’s followed the South Platte River into what is now Denver and then south to Santa Fé . All that can be said with certainty is that the Mallets traveled near Fort Morgan and successfully reached Santa Fé on July 22, 1739.

Direct evidence of explorers through the Fort Morgan area is scarce, but secondary reports exist. Zebulon Pike did not travel along the South Platte River, but along the Arkansas River and then south to Santa Fé. However, once reaching Santa Fé, he wrote of encountering James Purcell and Baptiste La Lande, travelers who may have journeyed through the Fort Morgan area a few years earlier.

Sources:

“Bird’s-Eye View of Nebraska History,” Pearson's magazine, 8, 2, p. 786.

Bannon, John Francis, The Spanish Borderlands Frontier, 1513-1821 (New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1970), p. 141.

Chittenden, Hiram Martin, The American Fur Trade of the Far West (New York: F. P. Harper, 1902), 489.

Extract of the Journal of the Expedition of the Mallet Brothers to Santé Fe, 1739-1740 Document No. AJ-092 Wisconsin Historical Society. found at http://content.wisconsinhistory.org/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/aj&CISOPTR=12069&CISOSHOW=5633 p. 47

Fiske, John. The Discovery of America with some Account of Ancient America and the Spanish Conquest. Vol. 2. 1892. NY: Houghton

http://www.americanjourneys.org/aj-092/summary/index.asp

Mehls, Steven F., The New Empire of the Rockies: A History of Northeast Colorado (Denver: Bureau of Land Management, 1984), from www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/blm/co/16/chap2.htm

Parkman, Francis. A Half-Century of Conflict: France and England in North America, Vol. 1 (Boston: Little, Brown, & Co., 1902), p. 367.

Pike, Zebulon Montgomery & Elliott Coues, The Expeditions of Zebulon Montgomery Pike, Vol. 2 (New York: F. P. Harper, 1895), 758.

Savage, James W., “The Christening of the Platte,” Transactions and Reports of the Nebraska State Historical Society, 3, pp. 67-73.

Settling the Land

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In 1866, Colorado's first bid for statehood passed Congress, but was vetoed by President Andrew Johnson who cited concerns with Colorado’s population:

The population [of Colorado] is small; some estimate it as low as twenty-five thousand, while the advocates of the bill reckon the number at from thirty-five thousand to forty thousand. The people are principally recent settlers, many of whom are understood to be ready for removal to other mining districts beyond the limit of the Territory, if circumstances shall render them more inviting

President Jackson's fears were apparently realized. Despite the surge of gold miners into Colorado in the mid-1860s, the population of the Colorado Territory remained relatively stable from 1860 (34,277) to 1870 (39,864). However, by 1880, the population of Colorado would raise drastically to nearly 200,000. Settlers came, but this time, they came to settle the land and it would be this new wave of settlers who would soon build Fort Morgan.

The first irrigation ditch in the area was said to have been dug by none other than Holon Godfrey in 1872 which was soon incorporated into the South Platte Ditch. Over the next two decades nearly two dozen irrigation ditches were dug in the Fort Morgan area including the Fort Morgan Canal begun by Abner S. Baker in 1882 and stretched approximately 25 miles.

Included in the August 30, 1889 anniversary issue of The Fort Morgan Times was a description of the canals in the Fort Morgan area noting at the time of writing that there were 200 miles of canal lines representing an investment of $750,000:

Commencing at the western boundary of Morgan county, the first system is the Bijou Reservoir and Canal Company’s property, which heads on the South Platte River…thirty miles west of Fort Morgan, near the station of Hardin, on the Julesburg branch of the Union Pacific Railway. This canal was incorporated in August of 1888, by Walter T. Brown, Walter B. Howard and W. H. Clatworthy, and its capital stock is $150,000….

Work was commenced on the line in September [1888].... The capacity of the canal is 450 cubic feet per second. It is the largest canal in the county, has a length of fifty miles, and under 45,000 acres of land…. With this line in operation, a continuous strip of country ten miles wide by forty in length will have been recovered from the parched plains of Colorado, and in the center stands the future metropolis of Eastern Colorado....

Weldon Valley Ditch Co. This canal is the main north-side one, and was built in 1882. The incorporators were P. W. Putnam, Dr. S. K. Thompson, G. A. W. Cage, Solon Martin and Albert and Jerome Igo. It is sixteen miles in length, and waters 8,000 acres of land. The stock of the company, amounting to $65,000, is owned exclusively by the farmers under it....

Fort Morgan Canal. The next large irrigating canal we come to is that of the Fort Morgan Land and Canal Company. This large canal was incorporated in 1882, by A. S. Baker, J. S. Courtney, G. W. Warner and E. E. and F. E. Baker, and built by the former gentleman during the following year, the first crops were watered from it in 1884, when about 5,000 acres were cultivated. The canal has a capacity of 378 cubic feet per second, and under it are 23,000 acres of the finest lands in the world….

Platte and Beaver Canal. The Platte and Beaver Company has two lines of ditches, and are known as the Upper Platte and Beaver, and the Supply Ditch. The original franchise of this system was granted to A. S. Baker, Lyulph Ogilvy and E. E. Baker…. The upper line has a capacity of 265 cubic feet, and the supply of 415 cubic feet per second, and water 45,000 acres of land unexcelled for irrigation….

Deuel and Snyder Canal. This canal, which is known as the More & Tracy ditch, is a private one, having been built, and the stock is now entirely owned by L. F. More and H. S. Tracy. The head of this line is on the north side of the river, just below the dam at the head of the upper Platte and Beaver ditch. The length of the canal is eight miles, width eight feet, depth three feet, a grade of two and eleven-tenths per mile. Under the line are in the neighborhood of 3,000 acres....

Other Canals. There are several small irrigation ditches supplied from the Big Beaver creek in the vicinity of Brush, several of which have large and sufficient reservoirs to catch and retain the spring and summer flood waters. Among these enterprises are the Beaver Creek Ditch incorporated by Dr. Emerson; the Sled Ranch Ditch, partially built by C. I. Lawton; the Obrecht Reservoir and Canal Company; the Big Beaver Land and Canal Company, and the Beaver Ditch Company, all taken from Big Beaver creek. This stream at no season of the year runs dry, and during the greater part of the year furnishes a liberal supply of water for the irrigation of crops… Further down the Platte is the private canal owned by Sheriff A. A. Smith, which covers about 5,000 acres of most valuable land….

Photo of three men in a boat on the Morgan Irrigation Canal. Fort Morgan, Colorado

Colorado attained statehood not because of gold found in the mountains, but because of the settlers on the plains who had found a way to harness the rivers.

Sources:

New York Times May 17, 1866
Resident Population and Apportionment of the U.S. House of Representatives www.census.gov/dmd/www/resapport/states/colorado.pdf
Eberhart, Perry, Ghosts of the Colorado Plains (Athens, OH: Swallow Press, 1986), pp. 11-12.
Baker, L. C. 1895. What Ten Years of Irrigation has Done for a Part of the Colorado Desert.
Cameron. 1908. National Magazine, 28(2).

Guides to Gold

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During the summer of 1859, an estimated 30,000 to 60,000 emigrants flooded into the Rocky Mountains in search of gold and the majority of the “Fifty-Niners” or “Pikes Peakers” traveled through the Fort Morgan area. Frank Root, a messenger for the Overland Stage described the route during the early 1860s when the Pikes Peak Gold Rush was in full swing:

The writer counted, from his seat on the stage-coach, along the Platte, between Fort Kearney and old Julesburg, in one day, during the civil war, nearly 900 wagons – to be exact, 888 – destined westward on the great overland route. These wagons were drawn by no less than 10,650 animals – cattle, horses, and mules.

There were three primary routes to Pikes Peak one of which was along the South Platte River; the other routes were farther south along the Arkansas River or along the Smoky Hill Route.

A number of guidebooks quickly came on the market to guide these westward hopefuls. Many of these guidebooks were written by men who had no direct knowledge of the trail.

In 1859, William N. Byers (later editor of the Rocky Mountain News) wrote a guidebook along with John H. Kellom A Hand Book to the Gold Fields of Nebraska and Kansas in which they describe six routes to the gold fields, one along the South Platte River. Byers had not travelled along the South Platte route, but he had interviewed Wynkoop and Stenberger who had travelled the route in the winter of 1858 carrying the charter for Denver City to Lawrence, Kansas. The authors insisted that their descriptions of the route “may be relied upon to be very nearly correct.” This guidebook also included a letter from M. D. Downs who reportedly was one of the first to travel to the goldfields in 1858 along the South Platte River route:

From Omaha, our road has been traveled by tens of thousands of California, Oregon and Salt Lake emigrants. This well beaten road now crosses the south fork, while our road to the Gold Mines continues on the south side of the “fork,” and is very obscure at best, only three wagons having preceded us over it….

The following day, something like a cloud, obscure and hazy, loomed up in the western horizon. The practiced eye of Mr. Brown detects the form, and he pronounces them the Rocky mountains. Our glass brings out the clear outlines of Long’s and Pike’s Peaks. Seventy-four miles from the ford brings us to Beaver creek. The banks are nearly one hundred feet high, and very steep. The stream is twenty feet wide, three feet deep, and the water very cold.

Some of the men road in on horseback, and guided the teams across after we had driven them into the water. The stream should be bridged; it is difficult to cross with a heavy load. After crossing the Beaver, which consumed some time, we came upon an encampment of the Cheyenne Indians, who annoyed us much by their thieving propensities. One, who stole a ladle from my wagon, I caught and searched; but, not finding it about his person, I concluded he had tossed it into the grass, where I subsequently found it. In order to frighten our cattle, they spread themselves across the road, lying flat upon the grass. The presentation of our guns brought them to their feet and stopped their fun. They are armed with bows and arrows, and one white man with a gun can put a dozen of them to flight. They will do no harm to a company of ten to fifteen persons traveling together.

Beaver creek is the first running stream we have crossed since passing Fort Kearney, though we have passed several dry channels, where there is doubtless water part of the year…. From here we toiled slowly and wearily onward 29 miles, to the second and last stream of running water between Fort Kearney and the mines [Bijou creek]. This is more alkaline than Beaver creek, and some of our cattle suffered from drinking it. As we proceed westward the country becomes more broken, and the soil less fertile and more gravelly, producing abundance of cactus and soap weed – an evergreen, ten inches high, sharp-pointed and rigid, like a spear, and completely protected by its sharp spines from attack….

The root is used by the Indians to remove paint from their faces….

Twenty-five miles nearer to Long’s Peak, which cuts clear against the western sky, we cross a dry channel [Kiowa creek] which Col. Fremont reports, in his explorations, a running stream…. Half a mile beyond, we pitched our tents in a small cottonwood grove [Fremont’s Orchard] – the first timber we have seen since leaving Cottonwood Springs, a distance of 208 miles. Here a high, sandy bluff, striking out to the river, cuts off the road, and compels our train to climb its steep ascent and cross a wilde ravine, after which the road is good and wood plenty.

Many of the guidebooks included lists of supplies that would be needed for the journey and for prospecting and also advertisements for merchants in the various eastern cities that would be the jumping off point for the Pike’s Peakers. For instance, the list of provisions Smith and Oakes provided in their popular guidebook included:

Teams, Implements, &c.
3 yoke oxen, $60 per yoke, $180.00
1 wagon and cover 85.00
3 yokes, 2 chains 9.00
1 tent 15.00
10 pairs blankets 40.00
4 steel picks 6.00
4 steel shovels 4.00
4 axes 5.00
4 gold-pans 2.00
3 augers 1.00
1 inch chisel .35
1 hand saw 1.25
1 drawing-knife .60
1 twelve-inch file .40
6 lbs. wrought nails .75
Total $350.95

Provisions and Supplies for Six Months.

1000 lbs. flour 30.00
400 “ bacon 40.00
100 “ dried beef 12.50
50 “ salt .75
50 “ coffee 7.00
8 “ tea 5.20
200 “ sugar 18.00
30 “ rice 2.40
150 “ beans 5.25
60 “ dried fruit 4.00
6 “ pepper, 1.20
3 “ soda .30
6 “ cream of tartar 3.00
25 “ soap 2.00
25 “ gunpowder 9.00
50 “ lead 5.00
2000 gun caps 1.20
4 gallons pickles 4.00
4 “ vinegar 1.00
1 “ brandy 6.00
2 dozen boxes matches 1.00
1 coffee mill .50
1 frying pan .50
1 dutch oven 1.25
3 camp kettles 3.00
6 tin plates .50
1 set knives and forks .75
1 set spoons .25
1 butcher knife .25
Total $166.30
Grand Total $517.25

But as more and the Pikes Peakers soon turned back to the east, convinced that the Colorado gold rush had been a hoax, they chanted: “Hang Byers and D. C. Oakes. For starting this damned Pike’s Peak hoax.” The go-backers blamed the men who written the guidebooks that had fired them up with promises of gold.

Guidebooks:

A guide to the gold mines of Kansas: Containing an accurate and reliable map of the most direct routes from the Atlantic cities to the farthest point west … by John J. Pratt & F. A. Hunt, 1859

The Illustrated Miners' Hand-Book and Guide to Pike's Peak, with a New and Reliable Map, Showing all the Routes, and the Gold Regions of Western Kansas and Nebraska. By Nathan H. Parker & D. H. Huyett, 1859.

William N. Byers & John H. Kellom, A Hand Book to the Gold Fields of Nebraska and Kansas

Reed, J. W. & J. H. Colton, Map of and Guide to the Kansas Gold Region (New York: J. H. Colton, 1859), pp. 15-16.

The Past and Present of the Pike's Peak Gold Regions, by Henry Villard, 1860
Traveler's guide to the new gold mines in Kansas and Nebraska; with a description of the shortest and most direct route from Chicago to Pike's peak and Cherry creek gold mines, Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Company, 1859.

Sources:

Bancroft, Caroline, Colorful Colorado: Its Dramatic History (Boulder, CO: Johnson, 1966).
Root, Frank Albert & William Elsey Connelley, The overland Stage to California (Topeka, KS: Crane & Co., 1901).
West, Elliott, The Contested Plains: Indians, Goldseekers, & the Rush to Colorado (University Press of Kansas, Lawrence, 1998).
Worcester, Donald Emmet, Pioneer Trails West (Caldwell, ID: Caxton Printers, 1985).

Irrigating the Desert

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Starting in 1872, the land around Fort Morgan began a dramatic change. Canals were constructed to bring the water from the South Platte River and the creeks feeding the river to the land. By 1889, about 150 miles of irrigating canals were complete and many of the canals are still in use today. A history of irrigation in Morgan County can be found in Lyman Baker's book Morgan County Colorado: What Ten Years of Irrigation has Done for a Part of the Colorado Desert and a later book by J. M. Dille Irrigation in Morgan County.

The town of Fort Morgan grew from this watered land and became known as the "Fort Morgan Oasis." An article in an 1889 issue of the Michigan Farmer described the budding town:

A showing of what irrigation can do is build up a town is seen at Fort Morgan, less than six years ago a plain sparsely covered with buffalo and other grasses and cactus plants. Now it is a “city” of 600 people, with a fine public school building, several churches, brick blocks for business purposes, and tasteful and commodious cottages, with shade trees and well kept lawns. It has also become the capital of Morgan County, has a newspaper five years old, the Fort Morgan Times, and is altogether a growing and prosperous place.

The secret of this magical uprising is irrigation. Its immediate vicinity is watered mainly by the ditch of the Fort Morgan Land and Canal Company, organized by A. S. Baker and others, finished in 1884 having a capacity of 378 cubic feet per second and covering 23,000 acres of very fertile land. The Platte and Beaver Canal supplies 415 feet per second, and waters 45,000 acres of land. These and smaller enterprises are only a beginning of development. Last year the Bijou Reservoir and Canal Company organized, with a capital of $150,000 and is twelve months two-thirds of the work was done, and all will be completed before the end of the year, when it will be owned and controlled by the farmers themselves and will be run by them on economic principles. Its capacity is 450 feet per second its length fifty miles, and it will water 45,000 acres of land, a strip of the formerly barren p—? one hundred miles long, which can be transformed into a garden in a single year. Already there are about two hundred miles of these canals and an investment of about $750,000 within this county.

The farms in this neighborhood present an appearance of thrift and beauty that is only expected in long settled regions, so far as the crops and the oil are concerned, while the farm improvements are new and still progressive. A few years ago the cultivation of crops was deemed impracticable, if not impossible. Now, in addition to perhaps 50,000 sheep, 10,000 to 15,000 cattle, and 2,000 horses, there are all kinds of farm products, some of them already selling in distant markets. The assessment of last year may have been half to two-thirds the quantity produced, and this year there will be a large increase yet last year’s assessment covered 311,1100 bushels of potatoes, 27,080 bushels of corn, 12,760 bushels of oats, 4,505 bushels of wheat, 3,890 tons of alfalfa hay, and 2,822 tons of native hay. Of wool 190,500 pounds were reported, and it is claimed that the product of this year will be four times as much. The increase of alfalfa is almost fabulous. It is becoming a great winter resource for ranchmen, is worth $4 to $7 per ton in the stack in this region….

Its always cut two or three times, sometimes four, and is credited with four or five tons per annum, but it is safe to place it at three, and it is a very profitable [ranchers] raising fine horses, feed nothing else during the winter.… It will not be long before Colorado will surpass Maine in aggressive product, if she does not already… This is a sample oasis of the many which are dotting all parts of Colorado as the result of irrigation.

Engraving of man digging an irrigation ditch published in the Fort Morgan Times August 30, 1889.

Some of the early farmers in the Fort Morgan area included William H. Jones, Frank Thompson, Oscar Leves, Michael Kleckner, George Edwards, James T. Devin, Lyman C. Baker, Abner S. Baker, G. S. Redfield, Abe Beidler, Josie Camp, George W. Warner, A. J. Wiley, James A. Conyers, and the Glassy brothers.

Sources:

“An Arid Land Town,” Michigan Farmer, 21 Dec., 1889, p. 6.
Lyman C. Baker, Morgan County Colorado: What Ten Years of Irrigation has Done for a Part of the Colorado Desert (Denver, CO: W. F. Robinson & Co., 1895). Fort Morgan Times, Sept 3, 1886 p. 1
Photo Source: Dille, J. M. (1960). Irrigation in Morgan County. Fort Morgan: Farmers State Bank.

Fremont's Orchard

2011-06-25T17:06:00.001-05:00

On the Overland Trail of the 1860s, the station west of Bijou Creek was Fremont’s Orchard named for one of the early explorers through the area, Captain John C. Fremont. The station lay approximately 20 miles from the Junction (Fort Morgan) and south of the South Platte River near modern-day Goodrich.

Fremont’s Orchard was not a true orchard in any real sense, but a grove of cottonwood trees that on the sparse plains was a delightful surprise. Perry Eberhart described Fremont’s Orchard as a meeting and trading place along the South Platte River trail and many travelers stopped for a night or two:

[Fremont’s Orchard] was long known as a haven to Indians and wary mountain men. It was also a meeting-place for Indians and traders, a rendezvous, pow-wow site where Indians traded valuable furs for baubles and beads brought from the east by the mountain men.

In 1861 it was a logical site for a stage station, an oasis after 16 barren and difficult miles from the previous stop. As with other stations along the Platte River Trail, Fremont’s Orchard became the center for early settlers in the region. It was a supply center, social center, a place for settlers to congregate to learn the latest news from “the states” or just to watch the hopeful emigrants go by. As was necessary for stage stations of the day, Fremont’s Orchard had thick sturdy walls, “a fortress” for settlers during the Indian scares – and there were many….

Though this was a major camping place along the route, it wasn’t used was a stage station until Ben Holladay’s Overland Stage Company began operating in the area in 1862. In August 1863, a post office was established at Fremont’s Orchard with John D. Kinnear as postmaster, though the post office was discontinued a year later. The post office opened again briefly between 1874 and 1877.

The trail at this point was a difficult one through heavy sands. Charles M. Clark described the journey from Bijou Creek to Fremont’s Orchard – with a little practical joke along the way:

After leaving the cut-off [near Fort Morgan], there is a long strip of heavy sand to cross, which extends to Bijou Creek, a small clear running stream, but which is more or less tinctured with alkali, and it was generally considered unsafe to allow the cattle to drink of it. This alkali consists of potash, soda, lime, magnesia, etc., the products of burnt grass and plants, which have been consumed by the fires that often sweep over these vast prairies.

We frequently saw large surfaces thickly incrusted with it, and so thick was the deposit, that we could have scraped up bushels of it. It is more frequently observed after a heavy rain, it being dissolved, and then precipitated upon the surface of the ground. Passing on from this creek, we found near the river bank, a fine spring of water, issuing from a crevice on the wall rock, falling into a moss lined basin, and passing through a pebbly channel to the river - one of those crystal founts whose beauty is full as refreshing as its water.

After some miles of travel over the upland, we descended, and encamped for the night on a beautiful bottom, where we found excellent feed for our stock. After supper, and while many of us were seated within the tent, engaged at euchre, several of our number, who were without, discovered what they termed an ingis fatuus, or will-o'-the-wisp, dancing oer the bottom, near a line of marsh, and all were called out to look at it....

Just then, another one appeared, moving backwards and forwards, and apparently approaching us, and several of the party, with Fred at the head, proceeded after it. After some minutes, they returned and stated that they had succeeded in getting quite close to it, and one remarked that it was the “prettiest thing he ever saw, burning with a blue, flickering flame” -...[we] were about ready to start, when a smothered, tell-tale snicker, from one of the party, arrested our attention, and we decided to remain in status quo and await the denouement.... our will-o'-the-wisps were two lanterns, in the hands of men, who were out looking up their cattle....

On leaving here, we follow up the bottom, and soon rise a heavy hill, which leads us over a ridge for a distance of about two miles, when we descend a precipitous bank, and find ourselves in Fremont's orchard, where there are many ancient looking cottonwoods, bearing a striking resemblance to so many old apple trees, which is the first timber that is met with after leaving O'Fallon's bluff. The bluffs or sand hills that border this orchard on one side, are cut and divided into many channels, which wind and circle back for long distances, sometimes terminating abruptly, but oftener dividing into others, which, if followed, will sometimes lead to the summit of the hill, or back again to the bottom from whence we started.

In following them up, we notice on either side many niches and caves, together with isolated pillows and columns of sand; indeed, in many places it is like groping through the ruins of an ancient city. Here is an old cathedral front, with its gothic arches and columns, its pinnacles and spires, its ornamented niches and canopies, and large ramified windows; and there are numerous pedestals, towers, and fantastic figures, all of which are exceedingly curious, and well worthy of more than a passing notice. We continued our way through the orchard, which stretches out for a half mile or more; and at a distance of four miles, reached Fremont's Hill...

In 1862, a toll road was built at Fremont’s Orchard called the Fremont Orchard Plank Road and Turnpike Company extending from Bijou creek along the south side of the Platte, but the road was still challenging. In 1863, the Platte Valley Wagon Road Company was chartered to improve the road, but this proved too much of a challenge. Fremont’s Orchard became less traveled when the Overland Mail was diverted along the Cut-off in 1865 at the military establishment of Fort Morgan and went overland directly to Denver.

Sources:

Photo: What Fremont's Orchard may have looked like. Photo taken near Orchard, Colorado by author.
Map: Fremont's Orchard station in John M. Townley, The Overland Stage: A History and Guidebook (Reno, NV: Jamison Station Press, 1994).
Sources:
Clark, Charles M. A Trip to Pike's Peak and Notes by the Way (Chicago, IL: S. P. rounds' steam book, 1861).
Eberhart, Perry, Ghosts of the Colorado Plains (Athens, OH: Swallow Press, 1986).
General Laws and Joint Resolutions, Memorials and Private Acts, Passed at the Second Session of the Legislative Assembly of the Colorado Territory (Denver, CO: Rocky Mountain Printing, 1862), p. 109-110.
Monahan, Doris, Destination, Denver City: The South Platte Trail‎ (Athens, OH: Swallow Press, 1985).
Shwayder, Carol Rein, Chronology of Weld County, Colorado, 1836-1983 (Greeley, CO: Unicorn Ventures, 1983).

Attack on the Trail: October 1865

2011-06-19T09:37:00.001-05:00

Fort Morgan (Wardwell) was most active in 1865 dealing with attacks along the South Platte River Trail in retaliation for the Sand Creek Massacre in November, 1864. Towards the end of 1865, as many as 11 companies of men from the 3rd and 5th U. S. Volunteer Infantry (Galvanized Yankees), the 13th Missouri Cavalry, and the 21st New York Cavalry were based at Fort Wardwell. These men protected supply trains and emigrants along the route.

The following report was made on October 29, 1865 by Captain Austin A. King of the 13th Missouri Cavalry who was then in command of the fort describing a recent skirmish with the natives.

I have the honor to report that the Colorado scout sent after the band of Indians that were recently upon the road have returned without being able to accomplish any good. The attack was made on the morning of the 20th inst. about daylight by two hundred warriors supposed to be of the Sioux and Cheyenne tribes. The train attacked consisted of about sixty government wagons and was camped about eleven miles below Valley Station.

The design of the Indians was to surprise the camp, but was foiled in their plan by two men who rose and heard one of whom they killed the other succeeded in reaching the train and giving the alarm after discharging both of the revolvers. The mules were secured immediately and the camp put in train for fighting which as soon as the Indians seen they immediately withdrew back into the sand hills out of sight and awaited until the train had pulled out and was about half way across the range of sand hills then some hundred or more made the second attack, but missed the time as the wagon Master corralled his train befor [sic] any general engagement occurred the Indians then circled around the train and raised the war whoop but finding they could not approach the train upon their ponies dismounted and made a charge upon foot. Some succeeded in getting into the wagons but the teamsters stood their ground nobly and drove them back to their ponies and across to the north side of the river leaving sight of their dead upon the ground also several ponies number of wounded not known.

The train then moved down the road a little distance where a second party made its appearance but were detered [sic] from attacking the train by my scout coming in sight. This party also crossed to the north side of the river except fourteen who went down the road for the purpose of plundering a small citizen train but they were also repealed by a detachment of the 6th Virginia Cav. coming up the road. The Indians then concentrated their force in the small hills on the north side of the Platt [sic] and moved off in the direction of the Cedar Canyon .

The Lieutenant immediately began returning fire but, the Indians were able upon their ponies to make distance so great that the shots were not effective he being unable to overcome them as [sic] force them to fight returned to the road to replace the telegraph wire which had been torn down, which being accomplished he crossed the River and made an another scout through the sand hills but found no Indians or signs of any returned. The Lieut. thinks the Indians lay in the Cedar hills and Poll? creek I have not heard of any Indians going south since my last effort. There have been no Indians upon the road for some time.

Source: Bloedorn Research Center at the Fort Morgan Museum

Press Release: New Book Links Fort Morgan, Gold Rush

2011-06-12T11:51:00.002-05:00

A new history of Fort Morgan links the town with the Colorado gold rush, the Civil War, and western expansion of the 19th century. The book titled In View of the Mountains: A History of Fort Morgan, Colorado covers the history of the Fort Morgan area from about 1700 to 1889 including the military history of the fort.

The book was written by a native of Fort Morgan, Jennifer Patten, currently a university professor living near St. Louis. On her blog, she writes about the project: “From my youth I brought with me only a vague impression of the history of the small town in which I was raised… Built on the site of a short-lived military fort in the heart of the great American desert; a fort that had never been attacked, never seen a battle. On little more than a whim I went in search of the fort’s operational dates (1864-1868), expecting this information would come readily to hand and that would end my curiosity... To my surprise, I instead found a door opening to the history of the west.”

Little is written about Fort Morgan partially due to the difficulty in identifying the military establishment, referenced simply as “junction” even after being officially named. Other publications have suggested the fort was unsavory and unimportant during the Indian Wars. Patten’s well-researched history instead paints Fort Morgan as central to military strategy of the time; the building of the fort a direct result of the Colorado gold rush and the Indian conflicts in the area culminating in the Sand Creek Massacre and the retaliation afterwards.

But, Fort Morgan’s history isn’t just military; it is linked with the movement west, with the telegraph and railroads - and with gold. This history of the Fort Morgan area starts with the journeys of early explorers, fur trappers and traders, the migration of the various Native American tribes and emigrants through the area and finishes with the rise of the town from the grasslands, emerging as a center of agriculture defined by the cattle industry and irrigation. With the establishment of the town and Fort Morgan as the county seat in 1889, this history ends, leaving the modern history of the city of Fort Morgan for others.

The title of the book, In View of the Mountains, comes from the dozens of diaries and journals written by emigrants who caught their first view of the mountains traveling through the Fort Morgan area. The history includes the area surrounding Fort Morgan spanning from Merino to Orchard.
The book is being printed by and will be available at Commercial Printers in Fort Morgan (paperback, 5.25”x8”, 332 pp., $16.95, ISBN: 978-0-615-49703-7), Amazon, and is available as an electronic download through various estores. The book may be pre-ordered through this blog.
The author posts additional historical information not included in the published book on her blog http://ftmorgancolorado.blogspot.com/. The author may be contacted through agedpage@gmail.com.

Going Postal

2011-06-11T12:03:00.000-05:00

Fort Morgan lies on what is often referred to as the Overland Trail, the road taken by the Central Overland California and Pike’s Peak Express Company to deliver mail to Denver in the early 1860s. The trail roughly followed along the south side of the South Platte River. There had been other mail services beginning in 1859, but Ben Holliday’s COC&PP soon became the primary service.

In the Fort Morgan area, there were four main stations: American Ranch (near Merino), Beaver Creek (near Brush), Bijou Creek (near Fort Morgan), and Fremont’s Orchard (near Orchard). The stations were placed approximately 12 to 15 miles apart to allow for travelers on the mail coaches to rest and the teams to be changed. A few letters survive from this era. The earliest postmarks bear a K.T. for Kansas Territory which was changed to C.T. in 1861 when Colorado became a separate territory.

Fort Morgan also sported a telegraph station sometimes referred to as Junction House, Junction Ranch(e), Junction Station or Post Junction. Frank Young wrote of his travels in 1865 across the plains just months after Indians had raided ranches all along the South Platte River Road and shut down the mail, but by the spring, the Indian attacks had abated and Young crossed the area without incident. His company traveled through the Fort Morgan area on Easter Sunday of that year and learned the shocking news of President Lincoln’s assassination just two days after it occurred.In 1865, the mail and telegraph consolidated at the newly established fort.

Most of the post offices closed in the late 1860s, but began re-opening in the 1870s with the establishment of railroad towns. One of the first post offices to re-open was at South Platte, a town built near the remains of American Ranch across the river from Merino – or Buffalo as the town was first named.

Historical postmarks from these postal stations are highly collectible and have been sold at auction for up to $4750.

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Photo sources: Schulyer Rumsey Philatelic Auctions www.rumseyauctions.com/home
Sources: Shwayder, Chronology of Weld County, Colorado, 1836-1983.

Custer and Fort Morgan

2011-06-08T12:29:00.001-05:00

General George Custer was in the Colorado/Kansas area in 1867. There is no evidence that he was ever at Fort Morgan, but he would have been in the area with the 7th U. S. Cavalry chasing Cheyenne as part of what was known as the Hancock Expedition (after General Winfield Hancock). As part of the Hancock Expedition, troops from the 7th U.S. Calvary were stationed at Fort Morgan under the command of Captain Michael Sheridan (brother of General Philip Sheridan).

By the middle of 1867, the people of Colorado were frustrated with the military’s inability to control the Indians. In April of 1867, General Hancock and the newly formed 7th U. S. Cavalry marched to meet with Cheyenne and Sioux chiefs camped near Fort Larned, Kansas on the Smoky Hill Route.

When the chiefs delayed the meeting and then secretly abandoned the village, possibly fearing a reprise of the Sand Creek Massacre, General Hancock ordered the village destroyed and over the next months, Custer and the 7th U. S. Cavalry chased the Indians across the plains. While Custer was south along the Republican River, the Indians were raiding along the South Platte, but just as troops arrived at the South Platte, the Indian raids shifted again to the south:

Gen. Augur had reached Fort Laramie from Fort Morgan, all well. The Indians seem to have left the Platte Valley, some going north and west, and others going south. The latter are undoubtedly those who made the raid on the Smoky Hill route and Kansas Pacific railroad on Saturday last. Outrages on the Arkansas, in the vicinity of Fort Dodge, and along the Santa Fe route, are reported, and it is not impossible that the theatre of war may be changed from the Platte and Smoky Hill to the Arkansas and the country south of it.

Custer’s troops zigzagged back and forth across the eastern plains chasing Indians, unable to stop the Indians from attacking the settlers and the communication infrastructure in the plains. The press took the military to task. A correspondent from the New York Tribune was particularly critical of the military and described the problems along the South Platte River route. From Salt Lake City, he wrote:

As yet we have no mail communication from the East since the interruption of travel by the Indians west of the North Platte, and judging from the telegraphic reports, it may be a month before there can be anything like regular mails, again from the terminus of the pacific Railroads….

If Gen. Sherman, with nearly 10,000 troops in the departments of Angar, and Hancock and fully 2,000 of them mounted, could not, in 60 days after reaching the Smoky Hill and Platte, protect any 50 miles of either of these routes, how long must it require, under the same military direction, to protect 300 miles from Platte City to Denver, 400 miles from terminus of the Union Pacific to Denver, some 800 miles of the direct line of the railroad from Platte City west to the mountains…. There is no excuse for the failure of the military commanders to protect the overland route….

Henry Morton Stanley a journalist who would start his journey to Africa in search of David Livingstone by rafting down the South Platte River past Fort Morgan in 1866 , described the situation for the Missouri-Democrat in June of 1867:

Between Bishop’s Ranche and Junction Cut Off [Fort Morgan], eighty miles from Denver, there are no less than ninety-three graves; twenty-seven of which contain the bodies of settlers killed within the last six weeks. Dead bodies have been seen floating down the Platte, and still men say there is nothing in it….

Persons have been known to travel fifty times between Denver and Kearney without being attacked, but those who betrayed carelessness have invariably been killed. The Indians undistinguishable from the earth they lie on, continue to watch patiently from behind the hills, or from the sage brush that screens them from view. As soon as they perceive a chance to get scalps or plunder they dart down, and the deed is done.

Three modes of settling this Indian war and of keeping the great thoroughfares clear present themselves to our mind. The first is by allowing volunteer cavalry from the territories to be sent under competent commanders against the Indians. The second is extermination. And the third is one which we wish most ardently would be carried out – vis., set apart a sufficient territory, drive all the tribes within its limits, surround it with garrisons that none may leave it, and into which no white may enter without a special pass. Then, and not till then, may we hope for peace or a solution of the Indian question.

Stanley noted the series of forts along the route, including Fort Morgan, but was not complimentary of the military’s efforts to protect the settlers:

Since the commencement of this Indian war we have scarcely heard of a single instance where a soldier has shot an Indian, or even secured a prisoner….

[The forts] are garrisoned by infantry. Two of the principal forts have a small detachment of cavalry, and these few horsemen are expected to protect the wide plains from the incursions of the savages. In peaceful times these forts are most valuable to emigrant trains and travelers who are driven to cross the uninhabited plains of the west, but in war time they are worthless as regards any protection derived from them. They are serviceable as depots where cavalry can obtain supplies during operations against hostile tribes. It is a universal complaint that, managed as they are, they afford no security to the overland waggon [sic] trains. By the time intelligence is transmitted to the commanders of posts the attacking party have risen up unexpectedly in some other distant quarter, so that even the dullest must perceive that they offer but little security to moving emigrants….

All these soldiers stationed at the above posts [list includes Fort Morgan] do not appear to be able to preserve the peace or to afford protection to the emigrant….

The Battle of Summit Springs (near Sterling) in 1869 marked the end of the Cheyenne and Arapaho in northeastern Colorado. Most of the area around Fort Morgan was cleared of Indians before the tribes were relocated onto reservations in Oklahoma. Conflicts continued between the Sioux and whites culminating in the defeat of Custer at the Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876, but by 1881, Sitting Bull’s Sioux surrendered and joined the rest of their tribe on reservations in the Dakotas.

Sources:

Photo source: Brevet Major General George Armstrong Custer, US Army, 1865 http://loc.gov/pictures/resource/cwpbh.03216/
Jordan, David M., Winfield Scott Hancock: A Soldier's Life (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1988).
“The Indian War,” New York Tribune, 26 June, 1867, p. 1.
“The Indian War,” New York Tribune, 10 July 10, 1867, p. 2.
Durgard, Martin, Into Africa: The Epic Adventures of Stanley and Livingstone (New York: Doubleday, 2003).
Stanley, Henry M., My Early Travels and Adventures in America and Asia (NY: C. Scribner’s Sons, 1895).

The Fort

2011-04-01T19:41:00.001-05:00

The building of Fort Morgan began in March, 1865 on the orders of Colonel Thomas Moonlight. He wrote to Colonel Samuel Browne, then commanding the 1st Colorado Mounted Militia:

Herewith inclosed [sic] please find plans* for the erections of fortifications quarters &c. at Junction, American Ranch & Spring Hill. I understand that Maj. Talbot, has the one for Valley Station. You will cause these works to be erected at once, for this purpose you will cause, every man not on other active duty to be employed in this manner. If you deem it necessary to detail an Officer who has experience in Engineering, do so, and keep him going from point to point, reporting to you the progress. A spirit of emulation should be encouraged among the Companies in this important work, the points indicated by Maj. Bennett will be strictly observed. This may require the changing of Station of Companies. Report weekly by letter the progress of work.

The 1st Colorado Mounted Militia was mustered out of service shortly after building commenced, but the Galvanized Yankees who were stationed at the fort continued the building. R. O. Woodward, a sergeant major in the 13th Missouri Cavalry described his first impressions of Camp Wardwell, already developing into a fort upon his arrival in April 1865 “…When we got there [Camp Wardwell] we found a lot of adobe buildings nicely plastered inside with mud mixed near the river (Platte). They just used alkali water in preparing the mortar and when dry the plastering was nice and white. The quarters were certainly good.”

Not everyone agreed. James F. Rusling, a military inspector described the fort in less than glowing terms:

…The public buildings consist of several good frame storehouses, sufficient for a year’s supply of all stores needed at the post, and a variety of sod buildings, all practically worthless. A report is herewith showing buildings more particularly. The barracks are intended for three companies; only two are occupied, the third being now used as a cow stable and guard-house. There are no floors in any of these. The roofs are dirt and sods, and all leak badly. The hospital is about the same as the barracks; it has a capacity of a dozen patients, but there are no sick at the post. There are no quarters for officers of any kind. The commanding officer lives in a hospital tent, and the other officers quarter in the storehouse and hospital. Two sod buildings are now going up – one for post commandant, and the other for officers’ quarters; but both are badly planned, and will probably tumble down before completion; the walls are too high, and are already cracking and bulging out, though the roofs are not yet on. No attempt has been made at abodes proper. Some lumber sent here from Denver, for floors, &c., for these buildings… The storehouses, shops, corral, stable, and sutler store, all face on the parade ground as the post now stands; and, as I have before said, one of the barracks is used as a post cow-stable. It is but just to say that the plan of the post, when completed, excludes part of these…. There are no quarters for employees except tents, and no chapel or reading-room. All of these will have to be provided should the post be maintained….

The fort fell into ruins after the soldiers left the fort in 1868, but some of the fort structures remained. In 1884, Lute Johnson, co-editor of the Fort Morgan Times provided a description of the fort:

…the buildings on the east and south sides were continuous structures divided into rooms… The walls of these were standing an average of five feet in height when the first settlers reached Fort Morgan. These were similarly built of adobe, sundried brick and plastered inside and out. The east section was about 180 feet in length and 20 feet wide, the south section about the same width and, if my memory serves, about 280 feet in length. They had evidently been living quarters and the impression was that the one on the eastern bounds of the compound was used for officers’ quarters and the administration while the one on the south line was probably the eating and sleeping quarters of the soldiers. The north and west walls were of lighter construction and evidently had been stables for the horses, blacksmith shop, and general service purposes. The poles of the roofs and the adobe buildings had evidently been cut on the island in the Platte bottom and dirt covered. The whole was an enclosure nearly 200 by 300 feet in size and sufficiently large…. It was calculated to hold two hundred wagons, or serve for drill grounds. The gate to the enclosure had been of poles. It was surely in the southeastern corner, between the south end of the officers’ row on the east and the east end of the mens’ quarters on the south. It was wide enough to permit a team to drive through….

On May 18, 1868, the flag at Fort Morgan was lowered for the last time and the cannon fired a last salute. With the soldiers gone, the sod fort melting back into the plains.

* Plans for Camp Wardwell and Fort Morgan can be seen at the Fort Morgan Museum.
_____________
References
http://boards.ancestry.com/localities.northam.usa.states.missouri.counties.harrison/45.55/mb.ashx Letter dated Jan. 11, 1866
Spencer, Sue F. “The Old Fort” In 111 Trees. P 263
James F. Rusling to M. C. Meigs, September 4, 1866, in Executive Documents Printed by Order of the House of Representatives, during the Second Session of the Thirty-Ninth Congress, 1866-’67 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1867), pp. 36-40.

* Plans for Camp Wardwell and Fort Morgan can be seen at the Fort Morgan Museum.

Colonel Christopher A. Morgan

2011-02-28T15:25:00.001-06:00

The fort was named to honor the late Colonel Christopher A. Morgan, an aide-de-camp for General Pope. (Note: A number of sources mistakenly attribute the fort’s name to Major Christopher A. Morgan of the 1st Illinois Cavalry and some state that Morgan was the first commander of the fort – this is incorrect.) Morgan had no direct connection with the fort , but as the fort – and later the town – was named for him, a slight digression is warranted. Frank Hall described the man and his demise:

Colonel Morgan was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, and was there liberally educated. Upon attaining his majority he became a partner with his father and two brothers in the business of book publishing and printing, under the firm name of E. Morgan & Sons. At the beginning of our civil war in 1861, the subject of this sketch relinquished his business and enlisted as a private in the 39th Ohio volunteers, but soon afterward was promoted to a captaincy in that regiment. Major-General John Pope, recognizing in young Morgan a man of unusual merit, attached him to his staff.

His courage and good judgment were conspicuous in the numerous campaigns and battles in which he was engaged, and his continuous service throughout the war, therefore he was promoted to the rank of colonel. When peace was at last proclaimed, his ability was so fully recognized he was induced to remain in the military service, continuing on the staff of General Pope, who had been assigned to the Department of the Missouri, with headquarters at St. Louis. Here Colonel Morgan was made inspector-general of the department.

He occupied rooms in General Pope’s residence on Choteau avenue. By some accident, during the night of January 20th, 1866, while he slept, the fire was extinguished, and the gas escaping into the room asphyxiated him. His character is thus defined in General Pope’s orders announcing the death of his aid: “His persona character was without a blemish and beyond reproach. To his admirable qualities as an officer were added a high sense of honor, unswerving moral rectitude, and constant respect for the rights and feelings of others. A true and gallant soldier, a high-minded and gallant gentleman, a firm and unwavering friend, he was an ornament to the service and to the society in which he moved.

Morgan was with the General during his most famous battle, the capture of New Madrid, Missouri and Island No. 10 in the Mississippi River which freed the river from a Confederate blockade . Morgan was also with General Pope during the Campaign in Virginia where he and the General had a close call during a battle near Culpepper, Virginia on August 10, 1862 against Stonewall Jackson’s confederate forces. The generals and their staffs were viewing the battle lines from a nearby hill when:

Very suddenly, while the fire was every where still, a volley of musketry came out of these woods, and a battalion of rebel cavalry dashed from the cover and charged down the hill at a gallop, discharging their carbines as they came. Generals, staffs, and escorts mounted and started without much delay, riding straight for our own lines, but scattering to avoid the rebel fire. But the moment the rebel cavalry came in sight, the nearest infantry, ignorant or careless of their generals’ position, opened with a volley along the whole line. It checked the rebels and did not kill many friends; but for four or five minutes the cross-fire under which generals and all were compelled to pass was rapid and hot. The sight of a sheet of flame from the line whose protection we sought and the whiz of friendly bullets was a little startling; but there was nothing to do but keep on, for the fire continued, and the longer we waited the worse it would be. Two of General Pope’s body-guards were killed and one wounded.

General Banks was severely injured by a runaway cavalry horse, which struck him on the side, but he kept his seat and remained in the field all last night and this morning. Colonel Ruggles, General Pope’s Chief of Staff, had his horse shot under him [and] Colonel Morgan, Aid-de-Camp to Gen. Pope, and Major Perkins, General Banks’s [sic] Chief of Staff, both had bullets through their hats.

Morgan was also likely with General Pope when he was defeated at the 2nd Battle of Bull Run at the end of August 1862.

Six months after Morgan’s death, General Pope set off on a tour of the forts in the Department of the Missouri and visited Fort Wardwell on June 22-24. Major Kellogg, a native of Ohio, had assumed command just a fortnight earlier and it is possible that during the General’s time at the fort, he talked of his former aide-de-camp, also a native of Ohio for during his stay at Fort Wardwell, General Pope ordered the name of the fort changed to Fort Morgan.

Indian Encampment on the Platte River, Colorado by Thomas Worthington Whittredge.

Sources:

Photo Source: Indian Encampment on the Platte River, Colorado by Thomas Worthington Whittredge. Whittredge accompanied General Pope on his tour of the forts.
Frazer, Robert Walter, Forts of the West (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965), p. 40.
Hall, Frank, History of the State of Colorado (Chicago, Blakely Printing, 1889), pp. 238-9.
Pope, John, “The Capture of New-Madrid, Mo. General Pope’s Official Report,” in The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, Volume 4 (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1862), pp. 297-299.
August 10, 1863, in The Rebellion Record: A Diary of American Events, Volume 5 (New York: G. P. Putnam, 1863), pp. 329-331.

Troops at the Fort

2011-02-01T09:16:00.004-06:00

In all, 26 companies of soldiers were stationed in and around the Fort Morgan area from 1864 until 1868.

The first troops were Companies C and H of the 1st Colorado Cavalry stationed at Camp Sanborn near Orchard. Later, Companies C and F of the 11th Ohio Cavalry were sent to the area to protect the Overland Mail route.

When Indians began raiding along the trail, troops (Companies F and L of the 3rd Colorado Cavalry) were moved to a more central location at the Junction (later Fort Morgan). When the "Bloody 3rd" was mustered out, a detachment of the 2nd Colorado Cavalry and Company D of the 1st Colorado Mounted Militia (Tyler's Rangers) began building a fort at the Junction.

The short-lived militia was replaced by more permanent troops: Company A of the 1st Colorado Cavalry, Companies G and H of the 3rd U. S. Volunteer Infantry (Galvanized Yankees), and Company B of the 6th U. S. Volunteer Infantry - the first federal troops in the area. Three additional companies of the 5th U. S. Volunteer Infantry would rotate to the fort.

Once the Civil War finished, four companies (B, C, E, & H) of the 13th Missouri Cavalry were deployed to the fort (called Fort Wardwell) to be replaced by Companies C, D, & E of the 21st New York Cavalry when the former were mustered out of service. The 21st NY were the last Civil War troops mustered out and the regular army would take command of the fort.

The first troops at the newly renamed Fort Morgan were Companies D & E of the 18th U.S. Infantry (formerly the 36th U.S. Infantry). The sole duty of the 18th was to protect the transcontinental railroad. When it became clear that the railroad would take a northerly course through Wyoming, the 18th was redeployed leaving only Company L of the 7th U.S. Cavalry stationed at the fort.

The last company stationed at the fort was Company G of the 4th U.S. Infantry. On May 18, 1868, the flag was lowered for the last time and the cannon fired a last salute. Captain Powell and the 4th U. S. Infantry marched to Fort Laramie.
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Photo Source:
Drawing by Frederic Remington "Protecting a Wagon Train" Published in The Milwaukee Journal, March 21, 1964 with the caption “Galvanized Yankees guard a wagon train crossing the plains in this Frederic Remington drawing”.

The Territories of Fort Morgan

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The land on which Fort Morgan is built belonged to the Spanish from about 1540

until 1700. During the 18th century, the area containing Fort Morgan vacillated between Spanish and French control. In 1803, the French, who had again regained control in 1800, sold a large area of land, containing Fort Morgan to the United States. This transaction is known as the Louisiana Purchase and the land containing Fort Morgan was in the District then Territory of Louisiana. By the middle of the century, northeastern Colorado would become part of the Missouri Territory and finally the lands along the South Platte River would be part of the Nebraska Territory.

During this time, however, the South Platte River was also on the very northern most edge of lands designated as the Indian Territory, created in 1825 as an area of protection for the various Indian tribes. However, by the middle of the 19th century, as more emigrants moved west and land became more valuable, the Indian Territory was compressed . The Laramie Treaty (or Fitzpatrick’s Treaty) of 1851 between the U. S. government and the

Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Crow, Assinaboines, Gros-Ventre Mandans, and Arrickaras defined the lands given to the tribes and the area around Fort Morgan was designated for the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes . But the South Platte River wandered through prime hunting ground and within the decade would also become a major highway to the Colorado gold fields making it a center of conflict.
The Indian land was part of the Nebraska Territory in 1854, but at the time there was tension between the North and South Platte territories and in 1859, the South Platte country attempted to separate itself from the North Platte and secede from Nebraska, seeking to join the Kansas Territory . Instead, the area declared itself to be a new territory.

The people of Colorado first formed a provisional government under the name of Jefferson Territory, but the territorial government was not recognized by the United States, as it was still then a part of Indian land , . Another treaty, the Treaty of Fort Wise signed on February 18, 1861 limited Indian land and freed up the land along the South Platte River for white emigrants. Just ten days after the Treaty of Fort Wise was signed, Colorado became a territory (February 28, 1861).

While doing business as Jefferson Territory in 1859 and 1860, the land containing Fort Morgan was part of St. Vrain county. When Colorado became a state in 1876, Fort Morgan was part of Weld County, but in 1889, became the county seat for the newly formed Morgan County.

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Photo Source:
Claims on Colorado Territory before 1861. Source: Ubbelohde, Carl, Duane A. Smith, & Maxine Benson, A Colorado History (Boulder, CO: Pruett Publishing, 1995), p. 52.

Photo Source:
U. S. and Texas map 1839. Source: www.lib.utexas.edu/maps/histus.html Fort Morgan lies just below the "D" in "Indian"

Sources:
Prucha, Francis Paul, Documents of United States Indian Policy (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1975), p. 84.

Kappler, Joseph (Ed.), “Treaty of Fort Laramie with the Sioux, etc., 1851,” Indian affairs: Laws and treaties, Volume 2(Washington: Government Printing Office, 1904), pp. 594-596.

“Laws of the Provisional Government of the Territory of Jefferson,” Rocky Mountain News, 25 January, 1860, p. 1.

Stone, Wilbur Fiske, History of Colorado, Vol. 1 (Chicago: S. J. Clarke Publishing, 1918), p. 199.

Fort Morgan & the Sand Creek Massacre

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On November 29, 1864, the 1st and 3rd Colorado Cavalry under the command of Colonel John Chivington attacked a peaceful Cheyenne village at Sand Creek (near Eads). Three of the companies involved in the massacre had recently been stationed in the Fort Morgan area: Companies C and H of the 1st Colorado Cavalry had recently been stationed at Camp Sanborn (near Orchard) and Company F of the 3rd Colorado Cavalry had recently been stationed at the Junction [site of Fort Morgan]. Raids along the South Platte River in the summer of 1864 led to this attack and the repercussions from the Massacre would have a tremendous impact on Fort Morgan.

A number of soldiers from Companies H and C described the battle. Private Alexander Safely of Company C recalled:

…I witnessed the commencement of the battle of Sand creek, being the first man on the ground. Lieutenant Wilson brought his battalion on the left of the village, while company H, of the first cavalry of Colorado, came up in line directly in front on the right of the village…. Wilson's battalion commenced firing, and at the same time company H, of the first, commenced firing. Before company H had taken their position, there were three Indians who had left the village and advanced to meet us. There was a company of the third regiment directly behind company H, and these three Indians, who were firing bows and arrows, shot over company H and took effect in the company of the third, directly behind company H. One of the Indians was killed right there. The next Indian that came out off the village from the side we were on was White Antelope. He came running directly towards company H; he had a pistol in his left hand, and a bow with some arrows in his right. He got within about fifty yards of the company; he commenced shooting his pistol, still in his left hand. There were a good many shots fired at him from off the horses, but the horses were jumping around so, that the men could hardly manage them, there being a company in rear firing. One of the men, who was considerably excited, asked “if no one could hit that Indian?” I told him if he would hold my horse, I would try and see if I could not get him. He did so; I got off and fired at the Indian, the ball taking effect in the groin. He turned then and ran back towards the village, and Billy Henderson, of H company, shot the Indian through the head when he was about the middle of the creek. That was the commencement of the fight, as near as I can recollect.

The battle lasted between six and eight hours and hundreds of Indians were killed. Chivington thought the attack a success, but other officers were horrified by the massacre. Lieutenant Joseph Cramer wrote:

…I am ashamed to own I was in it with my Co. Col. Chivington…came on to Black Kettles village of 103 lodges, containing not over 500 all told, 350 of which were women and children…. It is no use for me to try to tell you how the fight was managed, only that I think the Officer in Command should be hung, and I know when the truth is known it will cashier him.

We lost 40 men wounded, and 10 killed. Not over 250 Indians mostly women and children, and I think not over 200 were killed, and not over 75 bucks [warriors]. With proper management they could all have been killed and not lost over 10 men. After the fight there was a sight I hope I may never see again.

Bucks, women, and children were scalped, fingers cut off to get the rings on them, and this as much with Officers as men, and one of those Officers a Major, and a Lt. Col. cut off Ears, of all he came across, a squaw ripped open and a child taken from her, little children shot, while begging for their lives (and all the indignities shown their bodies that was ever heard of) (women shot while on their knees, with their arms around soldiers a begging for their lives) things that Indians would be ashamed to do. To give you some little idea, squaws were known to kill their own children, and then themselves, rather than to have them taken prisoners. Most of the Indians yielded 4 or 5 scalps. But enough! for I know you are disgusted already. Black Kettle, White Antelope, War Bonnet, Left Hand, Little Robe and several other chiefs were killed. Black Kettle said when he saw us coming, that he was glad, for it was Major Wynkoop coming to make peace. Left Hand stood with his hands folded across his breast, until he was shot saying, “Soldiers no hurt me - soldiers my friends…”

Very quickly the published details of the massacre created a public outrage and before the year was out, Congress undertook an investigation concerning the events leading to the Sand Creek Massacre. The allied Indian tribes had a different reaction - they would retaliate in force and their first strike would be along the South Platte River Road, a major supply line to Denver now devoid of troops. The retaliatory attacks would lead directly to the building of Fort Morgan.
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Photo Source:
Dunn, J. P., Massacres of the Mountains: A History of the Indian Wars, Volume 2 (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1886), p. 441.

Sources:
Alexander F. Safely interviewed by J. M. Chivington, May 19. 1865, Senate Executive Documents for the Second Session of the Thirty-Ninth Congress of the United States of America, 1866-67 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1867), p. 219-222.

Roberts, Gary L. & David Fridtjof Halaas, “Written in Blood: The Soule-Cramer Sand Creek Massacre Letters,” in Ben Fogelberg’ Western Voices: 125 Years of Colorado Writing (Golden, CO: Fulcrum, 2004), pp. 319-337.

Battle at Fremont's Orchard

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On April 12, 1864, a company of about 20 soldiers from Companies C and H of the 1st Colorado Cavalry under the command of Second Lieutenant Clark Dunn based at Camp Sanborn (near Orchard, Colorado), set out to find a group Cheyenne who reportedly stole stock from a local rancher:

…Ripley, a ranchman, living on the Bijon [sic] creek, near camp Sanborn, came into camp and informed Captain Sanborn, commanding, that his stock had all been stolen by the Indians, requesting assistance to recover it. Captain Sanborn ordered Lieutenant Clark Dunn, with a detachment of troops, to pursue the Indians and recover the stock; but if possible, to avoid a collision with them. Upon approaching the Indians, Lieutenant Dunn dismounted, walked forward alone about fifty paces from his command, and requested the Indians to return the stock, which Mr. Ripley had recognized as his; but the Indians treated him with contempt, and commenced firing upon him, which resulted in four of the troops being wounded and about fifteen Indians being killed and wounded, Lieutenant Dunn narrowly escaping with his life….

The Indians recounted a different version of events:

[E]arly in April, fourteen young men, all Dog Soldiers, left the camp on Beaver Creek and started north to take part in the expedition against the Crows. Before they reached the South Platte they found four stray mules on the prairie and drove them along with them. That same night a white man came into their camp and claimed the mules. The Indians who had found them told him that he could have them if he would give them a present to pay them for their trouble. The man went away to a camp of soldiers nearby and told the officer that a party of hostile Indians had driven off his animals…. According to the statements of Indians who were of the party the troops charged on them without any warning. Four men were shot by the Indians, one of whom they supposed to be an officer. Of the Indians Bear Man, Wolf Coming Out, and Mad Wolf were wounded. The soldiers retreated and the Indians, thoroughly frightened, gave up their expedition to the north and returned to the camp on Beaver Creek. They took with them the head of the officer, which they had cut off, and his jacket, field-glasses, and watch.

The military accounts paint the Cheyenne as the aggressors and in the Cheyenne accounts, the military charged without warning. It is possible that that the fault lay on both sides, the battle resulting from a grave misunderstanding; the military attempting to take weapons away from the Cheyenne may have been misinterpreted as a hostile act and the Cheyenne responded accordingly to protect their own safety. The discrepancies also include the injuries. The Cheyennes reported wounding a soldier and cutting off his head. The military records report four wounded soldiers (two mortally) who were taken back to Camp Sanborn and does not mention a soldier killed on the battlefield.

The Battle at Fremont’s Orchard signaled the start of the war with the Cheyenne. Over the coming months, Indians raids along the South Platte River and the military response escalated, culminating in the Sand Creek Massacre.
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Sources:
Joint Committee on the Conduct of the War, Massacre of Cheyenne Indians, 38th Congress, 2nd Session (Washington, 1865), p. 107.

Grinnell, George Bird, The Fighting Cheyennes (NY: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1915), pp. 134-6.