Young Man Afraid of His Horses fought the US the first time in 1865 when the Lakotas and Cheyennes (in retaliation for the Sand Creek massacre) raided settlements along the Platte River Valley. When the U.S. Army built forts in 1866 in the Powder River country to protect emigrants on the Bozeman Trail to the gold fields in Montana, Red Cloud, led the Lakotas against the soldiers. Young Man Afraid, with Crazy Horse, his boyhood friend, fought with bravery in the Fetterman and Wagon Box fights.