For Kansans, the Civil War began early. The era—Bleeding Kansas it was called—made the Civil War intensely personal when its Free Staters became Union soldiers. But when the Civil War ended, war wasn’t over for them. An Indian war waited for them along the North Platte River, far to the West.
Two battles on July 26, 1865 near Platte Bridge Station near present-day Casper, Wyo., are best understood in the context of tribal response to the Sand Creek Massacre the previous November. Twenty-eight U.S. troops were killed that day including Lt. Caspar Collins, for whom Fort Caspar and the town of Casper were later named.
The Fetterman Battlefield, southeast of present Story, Wyo., marks the spot where Capt. William Fetterman and all 80 men under his command were killed Dec. 21, 1866 by Lakota Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho Indians.