WES SMALLING Star-Tribune staff writer | Posted: Saturday, July 26, 2008 12:00 am
The location of the 1865 Battle of Red Buttes and the graves of soldiers killed in the attack remains a mystery.
This summer a team of state archaeologists and volunteers conducted a meticulous grid-by-grid search for the site on private land in the foothills west of Casper near Poison Spider and Robertson roads. The area is believed by some historians to be where a war party of hundreds of American Indians killed 22 U.S. Cavalrymen who were travelling from Sweetwater Station to Platte Bridge Station 143 years ago today.
Crews swept the ground for clues using metal detectors and one magnetometer, a deeper penetrating magnetic-sensor device. The search, now concluded, turned up some relics from the time period but nothing definitive enough to say this must be the place, said state archaeologist Mark Miller.
"Nothing we found demonstrates unequivocally that it was the battlefield, but there are areas up there that we can't really write off either," he said.
Items found included musket balls, a percussion cap and a bullet that appears to match the type fired from a Smith carbine, a weapon that some of the fort's soldiers had at that time. Also found were some fragments of burned items and wagon parts, "which is no big surprise because we're right on the Oregon Trail," Miller said.
On July 26, 1865, a wagon train of 25 soldiers led by Sgt. Amos Custard came under attack by hundreds of American Indians. All but three of the soldiers were killed. Earlier that same morning, Lt. Caspar Collins and four other soldiers were killed in the Battle of Platte Bridge after they left the fort in an attempt to reach Custard's wagon train to try and escort it to safety.
The city of Casper is a misspelled version of Collins' first name. After the battle, Platte Bridge Station was renamed Fort Casper in his memory, then later corrected to Fort Caspar when the site was reconstructed in the 1930s.
Many of the eyewitness accounts of the day's battles are vague or contradict each other. Several attempts have been made to find the Red Buttes battle site since the 1920s. Historical records indicate the dead soldiers were buried at the battlefield.
This fall, state archeologists will conduct a lab analysis of the items recovered in this year's search. They'll also prepare a report for the State Historic Preservation Office and will consider securing funding to conduct another search next year, Miller said. This year's project was funded by a $17,000 grant from the Natrona County Commission along with matching state funds.
Archaeologists would like to find the battle site and graves soon in case urban developments expand into the area.
"There's some concern with all the development that's going on in Casper. We'd like to do a recovery of the site and even protect a small area before it's lost," he said.
Forensic studies can help researchers reconstruct such things as where defensive firing positions might have been and to identify the dead, Miller said.
Putting Sgt. Amos Custard to rest in a marked grave would "bring a sense of peace" to the Custard family, said Joyce Custard Rockwell, the commissary sergeant's great-great granddaughter who lives in Colorado Springs, Colo.
According to historical accounts, Sgt. Custard badly underestimated the danger his wagon train was in and the night before the attack scoffed at a warning to return with his men to the fort before sunrise.
"He had fought in the east with the Indians there and beaten them pretty easily," Joyce Custard Rockwell said. "I think because of his previous experiences - he had had great success - I think he did not realize the scope of the situation. I don't think anybody at that time really did, had realized how the Indians had joined forces and the number of people that he was going to be fighting."
It's possible that some or all of the bodies were moved to other military sites or that the men are buried somewhere at Fort Caspar, said Rick Young, director of Fort Caspar Museum. A few other graves have been found unintentionally during construction projects at the fort over the years.
"There are probably more bodies scattered around," Young said.
Collins is buried in his hometown of Hillsboro, Ohio. A set of headstones commemorating the men killed in the Battle of Red Buttes is located on private land west of Casper, but the markers are only a memorial and no bodies are buried beneath them, Miller said.