Near Rock Springs, Wyoming, Anglo-European coal miners killed 26 Chinese on Thursday afternoon, September 3, 1885, and torched their nearby settlement. More than 550 other Orientals fled into the hills. Two days later, Fort Fred Steele's commander Lieutenant Colonel Henry L. Chipman, plus two officers and 49 enlisted men of the 7th Infantry's Companies B and E, were ordered west by train to quell the chaos and protect government property. They also helped establish Camp Pilot Butte near Rock Springs before returning to Fort Fred Steele in mid-November that same year.