Connor Battlefield

Connor Battlefield. Wyoming. , At this site on Tongue River, August 29, 1865, Brigadier General Patrick E. Connor. 125 cavalrymen, and 90 Indian scouts attacked an Arapaho village of several hundred lodges. After a swift night march, Connor’s men surprised and stormed the village. As women and children fled, the men held off the troopers before withdrawing. Connor galloped in pursuit while Pawnee scouts rounded up the Arapaho horse herd and soldiers destroyed the village. When the Arapahos launched an aggressive counterattack, the army command retreated down the Tongue. Only their howitzers prevented the outnumbered soldiers from suffering serious casualties. Although Connor claimed his troops killed 35 Arapahos, the actual number of killed and wounded among the Indians is unknown. Seven army men were injured. The Battle of Tongue River ended with Connor’s withdrawal from the field under fire – hardly a victory although it inflicted serious damage upon, and outraged, the Arapaho. It resolved nothing., In April 1865 the Civil War ended at Appomattox. The nation’s focus turned to the Far West. Responding to Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho resistance to white travel through Indian hunting lands and traffic on the Bozeman Trail, Connor launched an expedition of three separate columns into Powder River country. They struggled in an inhospitable land, far from supply bases. The expensive campaign failed, emboldening rather than discouraging Indians. Nevertheless, fighting this battle, establishing Fort Connor (later renamed Reno) on the Powder River, and focusing attention on the Bozeman Trail, the expedition encouraged emigrant traffic. This sparked twelve more years of warfare that ended only with the campaigns following Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer’s 1876 defeat on the Little Bighorn, when the army ultimately won control of these lands for the United States.