Battle of Red Buttes

[Diane Merkel]

Time is running out on the search for the site of the Battle of Red Buttes, which played a pivotal role in the history of the city of Casper.

As Casper expands, there's an increasing chance that development will overrun the 1865 battlefield. It's important for archaeologists to redouble their efforts to find the exact location, so the 22 soldiers who died there can be properly buried and the site recognized.

Source: www.trib.com/articles/2008/07/31/editorial/editorial/3c70391f9a49394287257496007be12c.txt

[biggordie]

Diane:

I am about as positive as it is possible to be, without absolute certainty, that Walter Mason Camp, who was interested in the Indian Wars, and not just the LBH, found and marked the site of this fight. The location is given, in Camp's notes, as 5 miles northwest of Casper.

Checking my notes of the Order Of Indian Wars annual dinner, January 1920, I find that my original suggestion was incorrect, unless Camp marked the site later, for he said. after referencing Caspar Collins' fight at the Platte River bridge: "On the same day, Sergeant Amos J. Custard, with some eighteen men, while escorting a wagon train, was surrounded - and all of the men with him were killed. This fight took place a few miles above the bridge, while Lieut. Collins' battle began within a mile of the north end of the bridge, and continued right up to the bridge. The site of neither battle is marked. From Deer Creek below, to Red Buttes, above Platte Bridge, there were numerous engagements between small parties of soldiers and bands of Indians, with considerable loss of life to the troops."

Billy Markland is currently enmeshed in a study of troop casualties of all types, at all locations in the Indian Wars, and I'll wager that he has something on the Red Buttes fight.

Gordie

[tatanka]

There is a marker on the north side of State Route 220 on a paved turnout about half a mile west of Robertson Road on the west edge of Casper. The actual battle site is two miles north of the marker.

[markland]

Jul 31, 2008 21:24:50 GMT -6 biggordie said:

Diane:

I am about as positive as it is possible to be, without absolute certainty, that Walter Mason Camp, who was interested in the "Indian Wars, and not just the LBH, found and marked the site of this fight. The location is given, in Camp's notes, as 5 miles northwest of Casper.

Checking my notes of the Order Of Indian Wars annual dinner, January 1920, I find that my original suggestion was incorrect, unless Camp marked the site later, for he said. after referencing Caspar Collins' fight at the Platte River bridge: "On the same day, Sergeant Amos J. Custard, with some eighteen men, while escorting a wagon train, was surrounded - and all of the men with him were killed. This fight took place a few miles above the bridge, while Lieut. Collins' battle began within a mile of the north end of the bridge, and continued right up to the bridge. The site of neither battle is marked. From Deer Creek below, to Red Buttes, above Platte Bridge, there were numerous engagements between small parties of soldiers and bands of Indians, with considerable loss of life to the troops."

Billy Markland is currently enmeshed in a study of troop casualties of all types, at all locations in the Indian Wars, and I'll wager that he has something on the Red Buttes fight.

Gordie

Gordie, thanks for the faith, however misplaced, in me. My study primarily concerns regular Army deaths on the frontier. However, that being said I do have a tab for volunteers who died out West while serving during the Civil War. Included in those are the men killed at Red Buttes; actually a natural considering I now live in Kansas and all but one were from a Kansas regiment. Regarding the location, Vaughan in his book Seven Indian Fights describes his attempts to find the location of the Red Buttes fight. I don't have my book here but I am pretty sure that he struck out. The only thing that he was sure of was that the fight did not occur where the marker has it. If someone has the book, perhaps they can touch on the high-lights of that chapter. If not, when I get back to town next week I'll try to dig it up.

Be good,

Billy

[cefil]

Aug 1, 2008 6:26:21 GMT -6 @markland said:

Regarding the location, Vaughan in his book Seven Indian Fights describes his attempts to find the location of the Red Buttes fight. I don't have my book here but I am pretty sure that he struck out. The only thing that he was sure of was that the fight did not occur where the marker has it. If someone has the book, perhaps they can touch on the high-lights of that chapter. If not, when I get back to town next week I'll try to dig it up.

Billy:

I've been looking through Vaughn's Indian Fights, but I'm not finding any reference to this particular action. Could it be in his Battle of Platte Bridge instead?

cefil

[markland]

Aug 1, 2008 6:43:19 GMT -6 cefil said:

Aug 1, 2008 6:26:21 GMT -6 @markland said:

Regarding the location, Vaughan in his book Seven Indian Fights describes his attempts to find the location of the Red Buttes fight. I don't have my book here but I am pretty sure that he struck out. The only thing that he was sure of was that the fight did not occur where the marker has it. If someone has the book, perhaps they can touch on the high-lights of that chapter. If not, when I get back to town next week I'll try to dig it up.

Billy:

I've been looking through Vaughn's Indian Fights, but I'm not finding any reference to this particular action. Could it be in his Battle of Platte Bridge instead?

cefil

Cefil, you must be right. I don't own the Platte River Bridge book (although that deficiency is going to be corrected) but I did borrow it from the library some time ago and likely got confused. The seven fights he deals with are from memory: Fetterman, the Reno skirmish line, the Rosebud, a wagon train hauling freght to I believe Ft. Fetterman. They are the only ones I definitely remember but I seem to think that there was something about his attempting to locate the scene of the Ft. C.F. Smith Hayfield fight.

We might also try John McDermott as he deals with the Wyoming Indian War history quite extensively.

Billy

[clw]

Yep. McDermott, pgs 94 - 98...

Custard .... came within sight of Platte Bridge Station around 11:00 am, at a point about five miles west of the post.

Sgt. Pennock observed Custard's wagon train "three and a half miles from the post H and D detachments corraled or tried to corral their wagons but did not suceed very well"...... In their haste, the men stopped the wagons in a hollow rather than up on a knoll.... On July 28 twenty-five men left the post to search for the Custard dead. After they had traveled about 5 miles, they found twenty bodies... Burial took place on the battleground the next day. The men named the little prominence Custard Hill.

[biggordie]

Nice find, clw.

Gordie

[biggordie]

All:

It seems that Old Gordie warnt so out to lunch as he supposed. While perusing the contents today of Liddic and Harbaugh's Camp On Custer, I noted this in the Introduction, beginning page 19:

"This was especially true for Robert S. Ellison of Casper, Wyoming [trying to obtain Camp's papers after his death]. Camp and he had worked together in 1923 to locate and eventually mark the site of an Indian fight which had taken place in July of 1865 [editor's note - ' This fight had taken place on July 26, 1865, 5 miles northwest of Casper, Wyoming. It was known as "The fight at Red Buttes." For the best account of this action, see S.H. FAirchild. "The Eleventh Kansas Regiment at Platte Bridge." Transactions of the Kansas State Historical Society, 1904, Vol. 7.]Camp said he knew the location where the men of the 11th Kansas Cabvalry were buried and directed Ellison to order the eighteen government markers and they would install them.

"......Hardly anyone was more shocked than Ellison when he learned of Camp's death [in 1925[]. He had done as Camp had asked regarding the markers for the 11th Kansas and they had been at his home now for nearly two years. Camp was the only one who knew where to place them and Ellison, quite frankly, was getting tired of tripping over them........

"......On November 10, 1927, Brown [General W.C. Brown] wrote that Ellison was going to be stuck with the tombstones, as he had recently discovered the remains of Sergeant Custard's detachment of the 11th Kansas Cavalry had been disinterred from their burial sites in the fall of 1899 and sent for reburial at Fort D.A. Russell [now the Francis E. Warren Air Force Base at Cheyenne, Wyoming]. Brown recommended to the surprised Ellison that 'a monument with names of killed and circumstances of the fight would now seem more appropriate than Government headstones.'"

The remainder of the Introduction is given over to the very interesting tale of how the Camp papers were eventually obtained by Mister Ellison, who was apparently a very dogged individual and would not take no for an answer [this usually being more or less the response of the Widow Camp, who manufactured more excuses than Carter had pills]. There is no mention of whether or not such a monument was erected.

Gordie

[Diane Merkel]

Excellent, Gordie! It sounds as if the monument was not ever erected.

Ellison was quite a man. I tried to find a bio of him (to see if perhaps he died around the time the monument was suggested) but couldn't find one. From some quick glances online, he apparently wrote a booklet about the history of Fort Bridger and was instrumental in preserving Fort Laramie.

[biggordie]

Diane:

He was indeed quite a man, at one time Chairman of the Wyoming Historical Landmark Commission, ans Vice President of the Midwest Refining Company. He died 16 August 1945. I have no idea how old he was.

His widow donated a large collection of his papers, including some of the Camp notes and manuscripts to Indiana University, his alma mater, where they still reside [in the Lilly Library] and are available to researchers. Another portion of the same went to the Denver Public Library, where they are also available for research purposes. Another significant part of the Ellison collection went to Brigham Young University Library. This particular collection was used by Ken Hammer for his Custer in '76 book.

There are Camp papers, letters and notes in the LBHNM collections, in the Southwest Museum collections, in the Buffalo Bill Cody Museum, the Gene Autry Museum, the University of Oklahoma Library research section, and in private hands around the US - and probably elsewhere. Ellison didn't get all of the Camp materials, and I'll wager that there is still some out there.

One of the things that has happened over the years is that some of the individuals who possessed Camp materials died and left the stuff to either their local historical association, university, or public library - and the problem is that most of these bequests have gone unnoticed by those most interested in seeing them. It is only by luck and perseverance that one chances upon them.

As the I Ching says [continually]: "It furthers a man to persevere."

Gordie
The Perseverer

[Diane Merkel]

Well, God bless those who persevere!

Art Unger and I are having an email discussion about primary sources. He has just produced a CD of the Reno Court of Inquiry, the actual scribes' notes taken from microfilm (the original was destroyed!) not someone's interpretation of them. I'll be getting my copy later this week and will report.

Has anyone published a book of locations of primary source materials for all of the LBH stuff? It seems to me that one has been done (perhaps The Custer Reader by Paul Hutton?). I have books from the National Archives that list all known locations of Union records and Confederate records, and it's a goldmine. I attended Miami University (Ohio) for over three years and never knew while there that its library has a stash of Jefferson Davis' letters. I still don't know how they ended up there, but that's another example of how spread out things are.

[biggordie]

Diane:

I saw that CD advertized on eBay, and will look forward to your report. I'm not at all certain that there is any central reference for original sources, because I don't think that anyone could possibly know where all the original sources can be found - even those which are in some repository somewhere - because they may be under someone's name, and if you don't know who to look into, you can never find them.

In the meanwhile, here is some more stuff on Ellison, from the Denver Public Library [there is one location for original sources, some of which were added only in 1991].

Ellison was born in 1875 in Rushville, Indiana, and graduated from Indiana U. in 1900. He then studied law, and was admitted to the Colorado bar in 1903. He was employed by the Colorado Springs firm of Schuyler and Schuyler, and specialized in mining litigation. He was elected to the Colorado House in 1911, and moved to Denver in 1915, then to Casper in 1919.

He served as Regional Director of the Oregon Trail Memorial Association [as well as on the previously noted Landmark Commission, which he helped found]. Ellison financed and compiled a history of the Pawnees, in recognition of which he was made a tribal chief by the Pawnee Supreme Council. In 1930, Midwest Refining was bought out by Standard Oil of Indiana, and Ellison was transfered to Tulsa.

After his retirement in 1940, he returned to Colorado Springs, and located in Manitou Springs, which was just north. He was elected President of the Manitou Springs Bank, and also Mayor of the town. He was also Director of the B.S.A., Pike's Peak Region.

Ellison wrote several books; was considered Colorado's leading book collector; and supposedly had the second-largest collection of Western Americana in the USA. He died in Manitou Springs, and was survived by his wife Vida [nee Gregory].

Quite a man, by any measurement.

Gordie

[Diane Merkel]

Absolutely. It's a shame his collection as previously described was broken up all over the country, but I guess we have to be pleased that the Camp papers at least went to research facilities. I wonder what happened to his books and the rest of "the second-largest collection of Western Americana in the USA."

Neat guy. Never heard of him until this thread.

I know we could never compile the location of everything in LBH-land, but it would be good to start. That's what I was attempting to do with the "Places of Interest" board, but it hasn't materialized yet.