The Bates Battlefield was the scene of an 1874 action in which an

Arapaho The Arapaho ( ; , ) are a Native American people historically living on the plains of Colorado and Wyoming. They were close allies of the Cheyenne tribe and loosely aligned with the Lakota and Dakota. By the 1850s, Arapaho bands formed t ...

encampment was attacked by U.S. Army forces under Captain Alfred E. Bates. The battlefield is a narrow valley in

Hot Springs County, Wyoming Hot Springs County is a county in the U.S. state of Wyoming. As of the 2020 United States census, the population was 4,696, making it the second-least populous county in Wyoming. Its county seat is Thermopolis. The county is named for the ho ...

, near the junction of the

Big Horn Mountains The Bighorn Mountains ( or ) are a mountain range in northern Wyoming and southern Montana in the United States, forming a northwest-trending spur from the Rocky Mountains extending approximately northward on the Great Plains. They are separa ...

and the

Owl Creek Mountains The Owl Creek Mountains are a subrange of the Rocky Mountains in central Wyoming in the United States, running east to west to form a bridge between the Absaroka Range to the northwest and the Bridger Mountains to the east. The range forms the bo ...

. Variously called the Bates Battle, the Battle of Young's Point, the Battle of Snake Mountain and the Nowood Battle, the action was part of a campaign by forces under the command of Lieutenant General

Philip Sheridan Philip Henry Sheridan (March 6, 1831 – August 5, 1888) was a career United States Army officer and a Union general in the American Civil War. His career was noted for his rapid rise to major general and his close association with General-i ...

to protect the comparatively sedentary

Shoshone The Shoshone or Shoshoni ( or ), also known by the endonym Newe, are an Native Americans in the United States, Indigenous people of the United States with four large cultural/linguistic divisions: * Eastern Shoshone: Wyoming * Northern Shoshon ...

under Chief

Washakie Washakie (1804/1810 – February 20, 1900) was a prominent leader of the Shoshone people during the mid-19th century. He was first mentioned in 1840 in the written record of the American fur trapper, Osborne Russell. In 1851, at the urging of ...

from raids by their traditional enemies, the

Northern Cheyenne The Northern Cheyenne Tribe of the Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation () is the federally recognized Northern Cheyenne tribe and a Plains tribe. The Northern Cheyenne Indian Reservation is reservation located in southeastern Montana, that is ...

, the

Sioux The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin ( ; Dakota/ Lakota: ) are groups of Native American tribes and First Nations people from the Great Plains of North America. The Sioux have two major linguistic divisions: the Dakota and Lakota peoples (translati ...

and the

Northern Arapaho The Wind River Indian Reservation, in the west-central portion of the U.S. state of Wyoming, is shared by two Native American tribes, the Eastern Shoshone (, ''meaning: "buffalo eaters"'') and the Northern Arapaho (). Roughly east to west b ...

. In June 1874, "Sioux, Cheyenne, and Arapaho warriors decided to attack the Wind River Shoshones. As the invaders crossed the Big Horn Mountains, they had a disagreement about the purpose of their trip. Some claimed it was a raid for murder and the spoils of war; others said it was to steal horses. Because of the disagreement, the Arapahoes refused to participate."Moulton, Candy. Roadside History of Wyoming. Missoula, Montana: Mountain Press Publishing Company, 1995. 203. Print. Sheridan ordered Bates to raid the Arapaho camp, reported to comprise between 40 and 112 lodges. On July 1, 1874, Bates set forth leading Company B, 2nd Cavalry with 63 cavalrymen, 20 white and Shoshone scouts under Lieutenant R.H. Young, and a party of 167 Shoshone under Washakie. Bates led thirty cavalrymen and twenty Shoshone against the encampment, occupied by Black Coal's people, at daybreak on July 4. Lt. Young took his scouts around to the other end of the village. Fighting went well at first for Bates' force, but the Arapaho moved to a nearby height and began to fire down onto Bates' raiders. Bates withdrew from the village without recovering his own dead., suffering four killed and five or six wounded, while reporting 25 Arapaho killed and 100 wounded. Other reports indicate the Arapaho suffered as few as ten casualties. Bates captured 350 horses of the 1200 to 1400 head associated with the village. Bates blamed his lack of overall success on the noise made by the Shoshone. Accounts of the battle by different parties reveal wide discrepancies in perceptions of the motivation, progress, and outcome of the fight. The Bates Battlefield was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the Federal government of the United States, United States federal government's official United States National Register of Historic Places listings, list of sites, buildings, structures, Hist ...

in 1974.

References

External links

* at the National Park Service's NRHP database
Bates Battlefield
at the Wyoming State Historic Preservation Office {{NRHP in Hot Springs County, Wyoming Geography of Hot Springs County, Wyoming Battles involving the Arapaho Conflicts in 1874 1874 in the United States Battlefields of the wars between the United States and Native Americans Conflict sites on the National Register of Historic Places in Wyoming National Register of Historic Places in Hot Springs County, Wyoming 1874 in Wyoming Territory