ARAPAHOE - More than two decades ago, Gabriel Warren was just a boy when he first heard the story of his great-grandfather, Runsmedicine, a war chief of the Northern Arapaho who long ago battled the U.S. Cavalry in central Wyoming.

Warren's family was living on the west end of Casper when his uncle came for a visit and they took a walk together along the North Platte River.

"Right over there in those cottonwoods is where grandfather fought and killed Caspar Collins," his uncle had told him.

It was 143 years ago today - July 26, 1865 - when Lt. Caspar Collins and four other Cavalrymen lost their lives in the Battle of Platte Bridge in a heroic but futile attempt to rescue Sgt. Amos Custard's wagon train. Hours later, the train was virtually wiped out in the Battle of Red Buttes. The two battles were considered great victories in the field for the Arapaho, Sioux, Cheyenne and other tribes that had banded together that summer to raid the telegraph line, supply wagons and soldier forts along the pioneer trails.

Runsmedicine died about 90 years ago, but his experiences of the American Indian Wars have survived in bits and pieces handed down over the generations in the native oral tradition of storytelling. The family's stories have never been written down nor spoken of in public outside the tribal community.

The Warrens met with the Star-Tribune on Monday at their home on the Wind River Reservation to share a few of their family's stories. They did so not only in recognition of the anniversary of the historic battles, but because they are concerned the stories could become lost due to the advanced age of their family's elders or represented inaccurately in historical accounts. The Warrens said they decided it was time that Runsmedicine was recognized as the warrior he was and that people heard the family's version of the historic events of the summer of 1865.

Historical records from that time period vary greatly, and the Warrens' story is just one of many perspectives.

"We can't speak for everybody else," Gabriel Warren said. "We can just speak for him and what he participated in."

Building towards battle

In a swelteringly hot teepee filled with smoke from their Marlboro cigarettes, Robert and Gabriel Warren, father and son, sit cross-legged on the floor. The teepee is outside the family home on the reservation, on the same plot of land their great ancestor homesteaded more than 100 years ago.

The father, a tribal elder who has the English name Robert Warren but also inherited the American Indian name of his paternal grandfather, Runsmedicine, is, like his ancestor, considered a spiritual healer among the Northern Arapaho. He sits stoically at the head of a circle wearing a magnificent headdress of porcupine quills and eagle feathers, and a "blue stone" turquoise necklace.

A lever-action rifle at his side, he flicks an ash into the ashtray at his feet. Quietly, he begins to speak of a time when the Arapaho people rode the plains on horseback following the buffalo migration, in a giant circle from Montana to Colorado.

By 1865, the Northern Arapaho and the buffalo they hunted had become boxed into central Wyoming. They were surrounded by other tribes, soldier forts and pioneer trails. Robert Warren's maternal grandmother, a woman whose American Indian name was Sings Underwater, had survived the Sand Creek Massacre the previous year when she was 9 years old.

"She didn't like to tell stories because she was still scared the Cavalry would come and get her. You might say she got traumatized from that attack, Sand Creek," Robert Warren said.

Some of the tribe were camped near Sweetwater Station that summer but many, including Runsmedicine and his family, moved to a hunting camp near Independence Rock.

"My grandmother didn't like Sweetwater," he said, beginning to crack a smile. "There were too many mosquitoes."

The land near Independence Rock had oil that the people could rub on their skin to protect themselves from the insects, he said.

Meanwhile, a war party of Cheyenne, Sioux and others had formed against the Cavalry and began raiding telegraph lines and were clashing with soldiers often.

History books such as "Frontier Crossroads" by John D. McDermott, attribute the upsurge in attacks to being a retaliation for Sand Creek and in response to a fight that had broken out between soldiers and bands of surrendered Sioux, among other causes. According to the Warrens, the Arapaho had their own reasons for fighting.

They explained that during that summer, the Arapaho were trying to find a safe place for their women and children to cross the Platte River, away from the soldiers, so they could all return to their homeland in northern Colorado.

"We were stuck here around Casper. We were just trying to get through without causing too much harm," Gabriel Warren said. "We didn't go looking for a fight, but we didn't back down from one either."

Everywhere they went, they ran into soldiers and forts. After being "pushed and pushed" by the Cavalry, the Arapaho joined the other tribes in the fight.

"They were all trying to protect their buffalo, their hunting grounds, their way of life," Gabriel Warren said.

It's unclear how many skirmishes Runsmedicine took part in that summer, but the story of one particular raid he led has survived the ages as one of the family's favorite stories.

War on the Wyoming plains

Armed with tomahawks and bows and arrows - very few guns, if any - Runsmedicine's band of fighters raided a train of military supply wagons. The soldiers set up a skirmish line that the warriors quickly broke through and overran.

"They took what they could off the wagon train," Robert Warren said. "The flour they found, they didn't know what it was at that time so they painted themselves up with it. They rode back in [to the Arapaho camp] whooping and hollering and scared the heck out of all the people. They were all painted white."

It's possible that the wagon raid was the attack on Sgt. Amos Custard's men in the Battle of Red Buttes, but Robert Warren believes it was probably a different skirmish that took place only days or weeks before the famous battles of July 26.

At that time the tribes that had banded together set their sights on Platte Bridge Station, which today is named Fort Caspar. The tribes hid their numbers and tried to lure the soldiers out of the impenetrable fort with decoys of small groups of warriors riding on horseback across the river. The plan failed at first.

"The Cavalry had seen that trick before," Gabriel Warren said.

Then on the morning of July 26, a group of soldiers rode out of the fort and the American Indians attacked in a swarm, with the Arapaho warriors swiftly riding in full-tilt on horseback swinging their tomahawks. A club was the tribe's weapon of choice, the Warrens said.

"They were trying to get back to the fort and we were cutting them off," Robert Warren said.

According to the family's story, Runsmedicine spared one soldier who was cowering on the ground covering his head with his hands.

"One thing he said was pivotal in his victory was the cowardice," Gabriel Warren said of his great-grandfather's account of the battle. "A lot of the soldiers dropped and ran."

During the attack most of the Cavalry made it back to the safety of the fort, but Lt. Caspar Collins was among the five who were killed.

Historical accounts say Collins led the small force out of the fort in an attempt to protect Custard's wagon train that would soon be arriving from Sweetwater Station. No one knows exactly who dealt the fatal blows to the young lieutenant, but it's been believed that Cheyenne warriors were responsible, said Rick Young, local history expert and director of Fort Caspar Museum in Casper.

"It could have been Cheyenne. It very well could have been Arapaho," Young said after first hearing about the Warren family's story.

History has a habit of mixing up which tribes were which, the Warrens said.

"I'm not disputing they [the Sioux and Cheyenne] where there. I know he was there," Gabriel Warren said of his great-grandfather.

The deaths of Collins and the other soldiers that day are "not celebrated," Robert Warren said. "They're just stories we tell."

Collins' body was found days later riddled with arrows and severely disfigured. Desecrating a slain enemy's body was fairly common back then. Both sides did it.

Many American Indians believed disfiguring or dismembering the body would prevent that enemy from fighting again if you ran into each other in another life, Robert Warren explained. Also, the warriors often disfigured "cowards" who had run away in a battle, he added.

Not all slain enemies were desecrated. As the Warrens discussed the treatment of the dead, it reminded them of another story from Runsmedicine that's survived the generations. In one battle with the Cavalry, which may have taken place on the Bozeman Trail, a young, unarmed army bugler bravely tried to hold off his attackers by wielding his bugle as a weapon. He kept up the fight swinging his musical instrument at his foes until he was encircled and finally killed.

"They laid him down on the ground with his trumpet, arms crossed, and covered him with a buffalo robe," Gabriel Warren said.

A fighting tradition

The warrior spirit lives on in subsequent generations of the Warren family.

Many Northern Arapahos served in the U.S. military during World War II. Four of the Warren brothers served in that war, including Hubert Warren, the uncle who first told Gabriel Warren of his ancestor Runsmedicine more than 20 years ago. Hubert Warren was the family's main storyteller until his recent death. He was a decorated veteran of the Army's "Bloody Bucket" division, which fought in Europe in the Battle of the Bulge and liberated Jews from Nazi concentration camps.

Despite broken treaties, discrimination, the suppression of native languages and other hardships American Indians have endured, the Warrens are a family of patriots.

In the years between the Korean and Vietnam wars, Robert Warren, the youngest of the brothers, served in the Army's First Air Cavalry, the descendants of the old "bluecoats" of the American Indian Wars.

"We've had a lot of bravery in our family, the whole Arapaho, not just our family," Robert Warren said.

Other Warrens have served in the military, including a few who are either currently in Iraq or have recently returned from military duties in the Middle East.

"Grandpa fought against that flag, the stars and stripes, but we fight for it. We love that flag," Gabriel Warren said. "I tell these stories to my sons. I say, 'This is where you come from, a long line of courage.'"