M. Chivington, at Fort Lyons, on the South Platte, drove the peace loving Indians into the more desperate of the savages. The latter was an unprovoked attack upon a large village of inoffensive Indians. Over the lodge of the chief there floated the stars and stripes, yet an hysterical, or a deliberately brutal, commander brought about wholesale murder, with the result that many hundreds of lives were lost in the years of hostilities that followed.

Following the disturbances of 1865, the early part of 1866 was ushered in by an attack upon Julesburg (Fort Sedgwick). About one thousand Indians participated in the attack, and the place was defended by Captain O'Brien and thirty-seven men, with two mountain howitzers. The Indians lost sixty or seventy men, while Captain O'Brien lost fourteen. But after one day of hot fighting the Indians gave it up and moved on to the North River country.

In 1865 J. F. Coad took the contract to furnish the garrisons at Julesburg and Laramie with wood. He was furnished an escort from Julesburg to the "wood reserve" on "Lorron's "fork, and there erected a small log house, called by him the "ranch." The day following its completion, he and three others were at work loading some wood about three miles from the "ranch." The thermometer was about twentyfive degrees below zero. His party was attacked by Indians, which rode clown into the valley between them and the cabin. They fled into the rocks, and the Indians pursued as far