The Bates Battle, July 4, 1874

We were fortunately recently to be able to tour one of Wyoming's little known battlefields recently, thanks due to the local landowner who controls the road access letting us on.  We very much appreciate their generosity in letting us do so.

Our Jeep, which should have some clever nickname, but which does not.  Wrecked twice, and reassembled both times, it gets us where we want to go.  But we only go so far. We stopped after awhile and walked in.

The battlefield is the Bates Battlefield, which is on the National Registry of Historic landmarks, but which is little viewed. There's nothing there to tell you that you are at a battlefield. There are no markers or the like, like there is at Little Big Horn.  You have to have researched the area before you arrive, to know what happened on July 4, 1874, when the battle was fought.  And even at that, accounts are confusing.

Fortunately for the researcher, a really good write up of what is known was done when Historic Site status was applied for. Rather than try to rewrite what was put in that work, we're going to post it here.  So we start with the background.

And on to the confusion in the accounts, which we'd note is common even for the best known of Indian battles.  Indeed, maybe all of them.

The text goes on to note that the Arapaho raided into country that what was withing the recently established Shoshone Reservation, which we know as the Wind River Indian Reservation.  It also notes that this was because territories which the various tribes regarded as their own were fluid, and it suggest that a culture of raiding also played a potential part in that. In any event, the Shoshone found their reservation domains raided by other tribes.  Complaints from the Shoshone lead, respectively, to Camp Augur and Camp Brown being established, where are respectively near the modern towns of Lander and Ft. Washakie (which Camp Brown was renamed).

The immediate cause of the raid was the presence of Arapaho, Northern Cheyenne, and Sioux parties in the area in June and July 1874 that had an apparent intent to raid onto the Reservation.  Ironically, the Arapaho, who were involved in this battle, had separated themselves from the Cheyenne and the Sioux and had no apparent intent to participate in any such raids. They thereafter placed themselves in the Nowood River area.  Indian bands were known to be in the area that summer, and they were outside of those areas designated to them by the treaties of 1868.

Given this, Cpt. Alfred E. Bates, at Camp Brown, had sent scouts, including Shoshone scouts, into the field that summer to attempt to locate the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho bands.  On June 29, Shoshone scouts reported at Camp Brown that they'd sited an Arapaho village.  We here pick back up from the text:

The expedition took to the field on July 1, 1874, and remarkably, it traveled at night.

A few days later, they found what they were looking for.

Let's take a look at some of what Bates was seeing:

This is the valley which was below the ridge that Bates was traveling up, the night he found the Arapaho village when he passed it by.  It's not clear to me if he backtracked all the way back past this point and came back up this valley, or if he came from another direction.  Based upon the description, I suspect he rode all the way back and came up from this direction, but from the high ground, not down here in the valley.

Here's the spot that Bates referenced as being the area where two ravines joined.  Not surprisingly, in this wet year, the spot is fairly wet.  But to add to that, this area features a spring, known today, and probably dating back to the events of this battle, as Dead Indian Springs.  The "gentle slope" from which Cpt. Bates made his survey, is in the background.

And here we look up that second ravine, with its current denizens in view.

And here we see the prominent bluff opposite of where Cpt. Bates reconnoitered.  It was prominent indeed.

Bates chose to attack dismounted down the slope of the hill he was on, described above, with thirty troopers and twenty Shoshones.  At the same time, Lt. Young, meanwhile, attached down the valley from above it on the watercourse, in an apparent effort to cut the village off and achieve a flanking movement.

The slope down which Bates and his detail attacked, and the draw down which Young attacked.

The draw down which Young attacked.

The slope down which Bates attacked is depicted above.

The fighting was fierce and the Arapaho were surprised.  They put up a good account, however, and were even able to at least partially get mounted.  Chief Black Coal was wounded in the fighting and lost several fingers when shot while mounted.  The Arapaho defended the draw and the attack, quite frankly, rapidly lost the element of surprise and became a close quarters melee.

The slope down which Bates attacked.

The valley down which Young attacked.

High ground opposite from the slope down which Bates attacked.

Fairly quickly, the Arapaho began to execute the very move that Bates feared, and they retrated across the draw and started to move up the high ground opposite the direction that Bates had attacked from.  Young's flanking movement had failed.

The high ground.

The opposing bluff.

The opposing bluff.

Bates then withdrew.

Bates' command suffered four dead and five or six wounded, including Lt. Young.  His estimates for Arapaho losses were 25 Arapaho dead, but as he abandoned the field of battle, that can't be really verified.  Estimates for total Arapaho casualties were 10 to 125.  They definitely sustained some losses and, as noted, Chief Black Coal was wounded in the battle.

Bates was upset with the results of the engagement and placed the blame largely on the Shoshone, whom he felt were too noisy in the assault in the Indian fashion.  He also felt that they had not carried out his flanking instructions properly, although it was noted that the Shoshone interpreter had a hard time translating Bates English as he spoke so rapidly.  Adding to his problems, moreover, the soldiers fired nearly all 80 of their carried .45-70 rifle cartridges during the engagement and were not able to resupply during the battle as the mules were unable to bring ammunition up.  This meant that even if they had not disengaged for other reasons, they were at the point where a lock of ammunition would have hampered any further efforts on their part in any event (and of course they would have been attacking uphill).

After the battle the Arapaho returned to the Red Cloud Agency. Seeing how things were going after Little Big Horn, they came onto the Wind River Reservation in 1877 for the winter on what was supposed to be a temporary basis, and they remain there today.  They were hoping for their own reservation in Wyoming, but they never received it.  Black Coal went on the reservation with him, and portraits of him show him missing two fingers on his right hand.  His people soon served on the Reservation as its policemen.  He himself lived until 1893.

Alfred E. Bates, who had entered the Army as a private at the start of the Civil War at age 20.  Enlisting in the Michigan state forces, he soon attracted the attention of a politician who secured for him an enrollment at West Point, where he graduated in the Class of 1865. He missed service in the Civil War but soon went on to service on the plains. His name appears on two Wyoming geographic localities.  He rose to the rank of Major General and became Paymaster of the Army, dying in 1909 of a stroke.

December 20

1803 The Louisiana Purchase was completed as the territory was formally transferred from France to the United States during ceremonies in New Orleans. The transfer actually technically also involved Spain, but only in some odd jurisdictional sense.  Much, but not all, of what would become Wyoming was thereby transferred to the United States, leaving approximately 1/3d of the state in the hands of Spain and a section of country near what is now Jackson's Hole in the Oregon Country belonging to the United Kingdom.

While the very early territorial jurisdictions pertaining to Wyoming are now largely forgotten, and while they were always a bit theoretical given the tenuous nature of actual pre Mexican War control over the territory, there have been six national flags that claimed Wyoming or parts of it, including Spain, France, the United Kingdom, Mexico, the Republic of Texas and the United States.  With the Louisiana Purchase, France's claim would be forever extinguished and the majority of what would become the state would belong to the United States.

1812     One of the dates claimed for the death of Sacajawea.  If correct, she would have died of an unknown illness at age 24 at Fort Manuel Lisa, where it is claimed that she and her husband Toussaint Charbonneau were living.  If correct, she left an infant girl, Lizette, there, and her son Jean-Baptiste was living in a boarding school while in the care of William Clark.  Subsequent records support that Charbonneau consented to Clark's adoption of Lizette the following year, although almost nothing is known about her subsequent fate.  Jean-Baptiste lived until age 61, having traveled widely and having figured in many interesting localities of the American West.

The 1812 death claim, however, is rejected by the Shoshone's, to which tribe she belonged, who maintain that she lived to be nearly 100 years old and died in 1884 at Ft. Washakie, Wyoming.  A grave site exists for her, based on the competing claim, in Ft. Washakie, the seat of government for the Wind River Reservation.  This claim holds that she left Charbonneau and ultimately married into the Comanche tribe, which is very closely related to the Shoshone tribe, ultimately returning to her native tribe This view was championed by  Grace Hebard who was discussed here several days ago, and it even presents an alternative history for her son, Jean Baptiste, and a second son Bazil.  It was later supported by the conclusions reached by Dr. Charles Eastman, a Sioux physician who was hired by the Bureau of Indian Affairs to research her fate.

While the Wyoming claim is not without supporting evidence, the better evidence would support her death outside of Wyoming at an early age.  The alternative thesis is highly romantic, which has provided the basis for criticism of Hebard's work.  The 1812 date, on the other hand, is undeniably sad, as much of Sacajawea's actual life was.  Based upon what is now known of her story, as well as the verifiable story of Jean-Baptiste Charbonneau, who had traveled in the US and Europe, and who had held public office in the United States, the Wyoming claim is seriously questionable.  That in turn leaves the question of the identify of the person buried at Ft. Washakie, who appears to have genuinely been married into the Comanche tribe, to have lived to an extremely old age, and to have lived a very interesting life, but that identity is unlikely to ever be known, or even looked into.

1886  Territorial Governor George Baxter resigned. He had only been in office for a month.  The West Point graduate and former U.S. Cavalryman's history was noted a few days ago, on the anniversary of his death.

1916   The Wyoming Trubine for December 20, 1916: Troops Rush to Forestall Border Raid (and a truly bizarre comparison made in the case of a Mexican American militia)
 

A story of a near raid in the Yuma era with a rather bizarre comparison between a claimed Mexican American militia and the KKK.   Apparently the authors there had taken their history from D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation rather than reality.

It's rather difficult, to say the least, to grasp a comparison between a Mexican militia of any kind and the KKK which wouldn't exactly be in the category of people sympathetic to Mexican Americans.  And it's even more difficult to see the KKK used as a favorable comparison.  Cheyenne had a not insignificant African American, Hispanic, and otherwise ethic population associated with the Union Pacific railroad and I imagine they weren't thrilled when they saw that article.

Apparently the "war babies" referred to in the headline were stocks that were associated with Great War production, which logically fell following the recent exchange of notes on peace. As we saw yesterday, the Allies weren't receptive to them, so I'd imagine they those stocks rose again.
1942  Sheridan's high school added a vocational preparatory class for essential work work.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1945   Tire rationing in the U.S. ended.

2005   Wyoming commenced a somewhat controversial cloud-seeding research project with the intent to increase mountain snowpack.  Attribution:  On This Day .Com.

2010  The University of Wyoming puts Bruce Catton's papers on line. Catton was a well known historian of the Civil War.

March 30

1889  Butch Cassidy participates in a bank robbery in Denver with the McCarty brothers.

1891  The Shoshone National Forest was set aside by President Benjamin Harrison as the Yellowstone Park Timberland Reserve.

1909. On this day, the U.S. Army abandoned Ft. Washakie. The post had previously been also known as Camp Brown and Camp Augar.. The post had lately been a 9th Cavalry post.

The facilities for the post remain in large part today, having gone over to the Bureau of Indian Affairs. Ft. Washakie, the town, is the seat of government for the Wind River Indian Reservation. The structures provide good examples of the period stone construction used by the Army at that time.

Ft. Washakie during a visit by President Arthur in 1883.

Some former cavalry structures at Ft. Washakie now in use as industrial or storage buildings.

1915  A quarantine on Wyoming livestock was put in place due to an outbreak of hoof and mouth disease.  Attribution:  Wyoming State Historical Society.

1916  The Punitive Expedtion: The Casper Daily Press, March 30, 1916
 

1917   Colorado criminalizes marijuana 
 

On this day in 1917 Colorado's legislature passed a bill that criminalized marijuana.  The act passed on this date stated:

An act to declare unlawful the planting, cultivating, harvesting, drying, curing, or preparation for sale or gift of cannabis sativa, and to provide a penalty therefore.

Section 1. Any person who shall grow or use cannabis sativa (also known as cannabis indica, Indian hemp and marijuana) that he has grown shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and on conviction shall be punished by a fine of not less than ten nor more than one hundred dollars, or by imprisonment in the county jail not more than thirty days, or by both such fine and imprisonment in the discretion of the court.

The bill was in part inspired by the civil war in Mexico.  It was being asserted that Pancho Villa funded his Division del Norte in part through the sale of cannabis. Whether this is true or not, marijuana was not unknown by any means in Mexico and it shows up even in music of the period at least to the extent that it features in the Mexican Revolution ballad La Cucaracha.  The bill was introduced in Colorado by a Hispanic legislator from one of Colorado's southern counties which were and are predominately Hispanic in culture and where there was  strong desire to disassociate themselves from Mexican refugees, including any assertion that they might approve of the use of the drug.

Colorado was not the first state to address marijuana statutorily.  At least California (1907), Massachusetts (1911), New York (1914), Maine (1914), and Wyoming (1915) had.  Colorado was one of the states that enacted the prohibition of alcohol by that time and therefore not acting on marijuana would have been odd under the circumstances.  It had already been addressed by Federal law to some extent at that time.

There's a certain irony in this, I suppose, in that Colorado is now a pioneer in a national movement that has seen several states decriminalize marijuana, although the irony would be diminished if the entire matter is considered in the context of its times.  It remains subject to Federal penalties, something that has seemingly been lost in the discussion of this topic, and there is no sign that this will change any time soon.  The Federal government, however, seems to have basically stopped enforcing the law on the Federal level for the time being, although that could change at any moment.

Circling back to Colorado, while often not noted in the discussion on this, Denver Colorado has provided a big test of the impact of the change in the law, and not in a good way.  Almost any casual observer who is familiar with Denver over time has noted the impact of the change and Denver, which has had a fairly large homeless population for decades now has a larger, but rather weedy one.  Open begging downtown for cash for marijuana is now common, and encounters with stoned younger people who are part of a marijuana culture will occur at some point if a person spends any time downtown at all.  All of this is the type of discussion that does not tend to occur, for some reason, in discussions over the monetary impacts of the change or on the degree to which the substance itself is dangerous or how dangerous it is.

1917  The Cheyenne State Leader for March 30, 1917: Guardsmen mobilzing at Ft. D. A. Russell.

 

Ft. D. A. Russell was being used for Guard mobilization this time.  It hadn't been a year prior for the Punitive Expedition.

The Wyoming Tribune for March 30, 1917: Germans spur Mexican outlaw murder?

 

Mexico remained on the front pages even with the US on the eve of war, this time once again in association with the Germans.

1918  Lex Anteinternet: The Kaiserschlacht Commences. Operation Michael. The First Battle of Villers-Bretonneux and the Battle of Moreuil Wood
 

Lex Anteinternet: The Kaiserschlacht Commences. Operation Michael

 The First Battle of Villers-Bretonneux and the Battle of Moreuil Wood

On March 30 the Germans none the less tried again, launching an assault south of the new Somme salient towards Amiens resulting in two significant battles, one of which is very well recalled today.  The Germans gained some ground but it was slight, and German troops lost discipline when they hit Allied supply depots.

The resumed German offensive opened up near the town of Le Hamel but was turned back, although the Germans took ground near the Hangard Wood.  This resulted in a five day pause in the German effort in this location until they resumed their attack towards the town of Villers-Bretonneux.  The French fell back upon the German resumed attack but British and Australian troops generally held well but were ultimately forced to retire due to a two stage retreat by the 14th (Light) Division. which ultimately fell back some 3500 yards to a new position.  Australian troops restored the line and counterattacked, pushing the Germans back out of the town.  This was followed up by flanking advances by British cavalry and Australian infantry which consolidated the line for the time being.

This phase of the German offensive also saw the remarkable Canadian cavalry charge in the Battle of Moreuil Wood in which the Canadian Cavalry Brigade conducted a mounted assault near the village of Moreuil, taking the wood against the prediction of failure of a nearby French unit, receiving assistance from the RFC in the assault.  The Germans retook the wood the following day, March 31, but the Canadians then took it back. The Germans ultimately retook the wood, showing the intense nature of the fighting, but the overall offensive was called off shortly after that.  Operation Michael had gained a lot of ground, but it had ground to a halt.  By April 5 the Germans were exhausted and an effort to resume the offensive against the British failed.

 The charge at Moreuil Wood.

1943  Lead by legendary UW basketball player Kenny Sailors, UW beat Georgetown 46 to 34 in Madison Square Gardens.  Sailors would enter the Marine Corps as an officer at the conclusion of that year.  UW would suspend basketball due to the war after that year.  Sailors eventually became a hunting guide in in Alaska, but returned to Wyoming in his old age, where he still lives, following the death of his wife.

1952  The ICC approved the abandonment of the Wyoming Railway between Clearmont and Buffalo.

2003  Teno Roncolio, Wyoming Congressman, and the last Democrat to have occupied that office, died in Cheyenne.

2009  The Wyoming Range Legacy Act signed into law by President Obama. 

2016  President Obama commuted the sentence of Angela  LaPlatney and 61 other prisoners.  She was a Casper resident who was sentenced to 20 years for possession of illegal drugs with the intent to sell the same and for hiding a man who was subject to a felony charge.  Her sentence will now end on July 28.  President Obama has commuted a large number of sentences during his time in office.

2016  Wyoming was hit by a massive Spring snowstorm that shut down much of the state, including offices in Cheyenne and, ironically, Casper's ski area.