Qualla: Battle of Platte Bridge

Battle of Platte Bridge: Introduction

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Crazy Horse was among the decoys. On July 25, 1865, the young Oglala warrior and nine others rode toward the Platte Bridge stockade, trying to lure soldiers across the North Platte River into an ambush where 3,000 warriors waited in the hills. But excited young fighters crested the ridgeline too soon, spoiling the trap. Disgusted, Crazy Horse and a Cheyenne named High Back Wolf galloped straight through two groups of soldiers anyway, doing little damage but sending them scrambling for cover. High Back Wolf was killed. The next morning, the trap would finally spring, and a 20-year-old lieutenant named Casper Collins would ride to his death trying to save a wounded soldier. The city that grew here would carry his name, with a spelling error that stuck.

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Image: Public domain

Battle of Platte Bridge: The Largest Army

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. George Bent, the mixed-blood Cheyenne warrior who recorded so much frontier history, estimated the force gathered at Platte Bridge at 3,000 men. It was, he wrote, the largest Indigenous army he had ever seen. Historian Stephen E. Ambrose called it the closest the Lakota and Cheye...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain

Battle of Platte Bridge: Colonel Moonlight's Disasters

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William Henry Jackson, Public domain. The U.S. Army defending the region was in disarray. Colonel Thomas Moonlight at Fort Laramie had spent May hunting Lakota 'in the opposite direction from where their trail led,' according to his own soldiers. On May 26, he hanged two Oglala leaders, Two Face and Black Foot, who h...

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Image: William Henry Jackson | Public domain

Battle of Platte Bridge: The Bridge

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William Henry Jackson, Public domain. The Platte Bridge was a vital crossing on the North Platte River for emigrants traveling the Oregon and Bozeman Trails. Built in 1859, it stretched nearly 1,000 feet long and 17 feet wide. On the south bank sat the military stockade with 100 soldiers, a few Shoshone scouts, and a...

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Image: William Henry Jackson | Public domain

Battle of Platte Bridge: Sergeant Custard's Choice

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit William Henry Jackson, Public domain. Five miles west, Sergeant Amos Custard led a supply train of five wagons toward the station. An Ohio cavalry patrol warned him that warriors were everywhere and offered shelter behind their wagon breastworks. Custard refused, saying 'We have been South, where fighting is done, an...

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Image: William Henry Jackson | Public domain

Battle of Platte Bridge: Disbanding

Tue, 27 Jan 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown author, Public domain. The day after the battle, the great army dissolved. Most warriors returned to the Powder River country for the summer buffalo hunt. Indigenous forces lacked the logistics to sustain a prolonged campaign, and this was their fundamental limitation: they could raise armies but not k...

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Image: Unknown author | Public domain