Yuma Crossing
Immediately after the Mexican–American War in 1848, the U.S. Army built Fort Yuma here to protect travelers from Indians raiding the area. It was the center point of conflict in the Yuma War of 1850–53. From 1864–1890, the fort and nearby facilities was the main army base to support the US Army's efforts to control the Indians throughout the greater southwest.
Numaga
An army officer arriving in the region just after the battle found a scene of chaos and some panic, with trains of people returning to California to avoid the Indians. Volunteers were armed and mustered to counter the danger from an estimated 15,000 well-armed and well-mounted "Pah Utes, Shishones and Pitt River Indians."
Since the Indians had assembled at Pyramid Lake there had been "daily news of massacres by the red villains."
Colonel Jack Hays, a former Texas Ranger, was given command of the United States forces.
Hays mustered a force of over 750 soldiers and volunteers, who set out from California on 2 June 1860.
Hays fought the Paiutes in two skirmishes near Pyramid Lake.
Neither was decisive, but the Indians sustained sufficient injuries to destroy Numaga's loosely coordinated command structure.
The bands dispersed into the Black Rock and Smoke Creek deserts and the surrounding hills.
Some travelled further into Oregon, Idaho and Washington Territory.
The war petered out.
U.S. troops built a temporary fort near Pyramid Lake, then moved to the more permanent Fort Churchill, which guarded the wagon trail from the east.
One man was killed in a U.S. scouting expedition around Pyramid Lake. There was a minor skirmish with a group of soldiers under Frederick W. Lander, an Army engineer.
Lander was establishing watering holes and building a wagon road through the Black Rock Desert.
To him, the Indian hostilities were a distraction from the job at hand, and he initiated a truce with Numaga that turned into a lasting peace.