The Thomas Party

In the spring of 1866, William Thomas, his eight-year-old son Charley, and Joseph Schultz, left southern Illinois bound for southwest Montana. Traveling by prairie schooner drawn by mules, they joined a wagon train at Fort Laramie, Wyoming and started up the Bozeman Trail bound for the Gallatin Valley. After the wagon train had safely passed through the hunting grounds defended by Lakota and Northern Cheyenne warriors, it stopped to rest and make repairs at the Big Horn River crossing just north of the Montana-Wyoming border. Many emigrants believed the trail west of the Bighorn River to the Gallatin Valley was safe from the Indians. Because of that, the three members of the Thomas party left the security of the large wagon train to travel on alone. A few days later, on August 24, 1866, Indians attacked their camp, located here near the bank of the Yellowstone. William and Charley Thomas were killed near their wagon, Schultz was killed by the river where he was fishing. The wagon train they had left came upon the site later that day. They were buried in a common grave beside the road. The meager details which sifted back greatly impressed William Thomas’s seven-year-old nephew. Seventy-one years later, in 1937, he closely followed the Bozeman Trail by car and succeeded in locating the forgotten gravesite.