This Day…

1866- an Act of Congress authorized the creation of six regiments of Black troops, two of cavalry and four of infantry. These troops went on to play a major role in the history of the West, as the “Buffalo Soldiers.”

1867- Kansas- a detachment of the 7th cavalry fight with Indians on the south fork of the Republican River. Members of the 7th also battle Indians near Fort Wallace.

1867- Fort Laramie, Idaho Territory (present day Wyoming)- peace talks with Old Man Afraid, AKA Man Afraid of His Horses, who was representing 200 Ogallala Sioux lodges, break down when the chief requests ammunition.

1876- Missouri- James-Younger Gang get their biggest haul as they take $100,000 from a Missouri-Pacific express car near Ottersville.

1876- California- Black Bart robs the Roseburg, Oregon and Yreka, California stage nine miles from Yreka.

1867- Bluff Ranch, Kansas- two enlisted members of an escort from Fort Dodge are killed by Indians near the ranch.

1867- Richmond, Missouri- the James-Younger gang ride into town shooting their weapons and whooping like drunken cowboys as they rob the Hughes and Wasson Bank. Pedestrians ran in all directions while six men –Jesse and Frank James, Cole, Jim, and Bob Younger, and James White-broke down the locked front door of the bank. The bandits stuffed $4,000 into a wheat sack and then raced to the street to their horses.

1858- Pleasanton , Kansas- the Marais Des Cygnes River at in Linn County is the site of a confrontation between pro slavery (“Border Ruffians”) and abolition (free-state) forces. The five victims of the massacre were immortalized as martyrs in the cause for freedom. This massacre was the last significant display of mob rule in Kansas.

1876- Norwegian Jon Torsteinson was born in 1827 and died on this day after a four-day illness. Jon later changed his name to John Thompson. He later became known as Snowshoe Thompson, the intrepid skiing mail carrier of the High Sierras in the late 1856 when he made the run between Placerville, California and Carson City, Nevada on skis (snow shoes had been recommended to him) in three days carrying a sixty pound sack of mail. Snowshoe Thompson continued this for the next twenty years.

1887- Arizona Territory- the Tombstone Epitaph reports a volcanic eruption and an earthquake in the Dragoon Mountains.