Most of the Cheyenne bands wanted peace with non-Indians. Representatives signed a treaty with the federal government in 1825. Soon afterward, traders built Bent’s Fort on the upper Arkansas River. The Southern Cheyenne settled nearby to trade with the newcomers. In 1849, the Cheyenne suffered from a devastating cholera epidemic, which killed as many as 2,000 of their people. In 1851, the Cheyenne participated in the first of two treaties signed at Fort Laramie in Wyoming, the purpose of which was to assure safe passage for non-Indian settlers along the Oregon Trail from Missouri to Oregon.
Yet many settlers violated the terms of the treaties. Prospectors entered the Cheyenne domain along the Smoky Hill Trail to the Rocky Mountains, and some of the Southern Cheyenne attacked them. Cavalrymen rode in to punish the militant bands in 1857, resulting in the Battle of Solomon Fork in western Kansas, where the cavalry mounted a saber charge, forcing a retreat.
The next year brought the start of the Pikes Peak gold rush, also known as the Colorado gold rush. Increasing numbers of miners and settlers came to Colorado to stay. In the following years, Colorado officials, especially Governor John Evans, sought to open up Cheyenne and Ara-paho hunting grounds to white development. But the two tribes refused to sell their lands and move to reservations. Evans decided to force the issue through war and ordered volunteer state militiamen into the field under the Indian-hating territorial military commander Colonel John Chivington.
In the spring of 1864, Chivington launched a campaign of violence against the Cheyenne and Arapaho, his troops attacking any and all Indians, plundering their possessions and burning their villages. Indians of various tribes began raiding outlying settlements. This period of conflict is referred to as the Cheyenne-Arapaho War (or the Colorado War) of 1864—65.
The ongoing military campaign pressured the Indians into holding negotiations at Camp Weld outside Denver. At this meeting, tribal leaders were told that if they camped nearby and reported to army posts, they would in effect be declaring peace and would be safe from attack. Black Kettle led his band of about 600 Southern Cheyenne, plus some Southern Arapaho, to Sand Creek near Fort Lyon. He informed the garrison of his people’s peaceful intentions.
Shortly afterward, Chivington rode into the fort with the Third Cavalry. The post commander reported that Black Kettle’s band had surrendered. But Chivington, who advocated the policy of extermination of Indians, ignored him.
Sand Creek rates as one of the most cruel massacres in Indian history. Although it is not as famous as the incident involving the Sioux at Wounded Knee, it is just as horrible, with even more people dying. It is also important historically because it began the most intense period of warfare on the plains after the Civil War. It can be said that Wounded Knee ended those wars.
In the early morning of November 29, 1864, Chiv-ington’s men, many of them drunk, took up positions around the Indian camp. Black Kettle raised both a white flag of truce and a United States flag over his tipi. Yet Chivington ordered the attack. His men opened up with cannon and rifles. A few warriors, including Black Kettle, managed to take cover behind the high bank of Sand Creek and fight back briefly before escaping. When the shooting stopped, 200 Cheyenne were dead, more than half of them women and children.
Chivington was later denounced in a congressional investigation and forced to resign. Yet it was too late to prevent further warfare. The Indians who escaped the massacre spread word of it to other tribes. The incident confirmed the worst fears of tribal leaders about the behavior of the outsiders who had permanently invaded their homeland.
In the years after the Civil War, the army launched two campaigns against the Plains Indians—the Bozeman Campaign on the northern plains and the Hancock Campaign on the southern plains. In the War for the Bozeman Trail of 1866—68, some Northern Cheyenne under Dull Knife fought alongside Red Cloud’s Sioux. To the south, after an unproductive parley with the Southern Cheyenne chiefs Tall Bull and White Horse, General Winfield Scott Hancock ordered troops to round up Cheyenne rebels. One of his leaders in the field was a young cavalry officer named George Armstrong Custer (who would later be killed in one of the greatest Indian victories in American history, at Little Bighorn). The war parties stayed one step ahead of the soldiers and continued their attacks on wagon trains, stagecoaches, mail stations, and railroad work sites.
A Cheyenne man with a sacred pipe
The failure of the army in both the Bozeman and Hancock campaigns, plus the earlier massacre at Sand Creek, caused U. S. officials to seek peace with the powerful plains tribes. In the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868, the Sioux were granted a reservation on the northern plains. In the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867, the Southern Cheyenne and Southern Arapaho received lands in the Indian Territory as did the Comanche and Kiowa.
Again non-Indians violated the terms of the treaties, settling on Indian lands, and warriors continued their raids. Cheyenne Dog Soldiers attacked settlements along the Sabine and Solomon Rivers. General Philip Sheridan was given the new command. The first major conflict involving his troops was the Battle of Beecher Island in 1868, which ended in a stand-off. Lieutenant Frederick Beecher and a much-revered Dog Soldier named Roman
Nose along with several others on both sides lost their lives in this battle.
The following winter, Sheridan launched a threepronged attack, with three converging columns out of forts in Colorado, Kansas, and New Mexico, against Cheyenne, Arapaho, Comanche, and Kiowa. The Sheridan campaign broke the resistance of most Southern Cheyenne bands.
The first critical battle took place along the Washita River in the Indian Territory in November 1868. A column under Custer attacked Black Kettle’s band. Even after Sand Creek, Black Kettle had never gone to war. He had led this group into the Indian Territory to avoid the fighting in Kansas and Colorado. But Custer, desperate for a victory, like Chivington four years before, attacked anyway. The Indians managed only a brief counterattack. Black Kettle and about 100 others died in this tragic repeat of history.
The army kept up its pressure. In March 1869, Southern Cheyenne bands under Little Robe and Medicine Arrows surrendered. Then soon after, the Dog Soldiers under Tall Bull were cut off by troops as they headed northward to join their northern relatives. Tall Bull and about 50 others died in the Battle of Summit Springs in Colorado.
Pockets of Southern Cheyenne resistance remained, however. Some Cheyenne warriors fought with the Comanche and Kiowa in the Red River War of 1874-75. Others reached the Northern Cheyenne and with them joined the War for the Black Hills of 1876-77, fighting at Little Bighorn in 1876 and getting their revenge on Custer by killing him and all his men. But the same year, a force under Colonel Wesley Merritt intercepted and defeated a force of about 1,000 Cheyenne at War Bonnet Creek in Nebraska before they could join up with Sitting Bull and Crazy Horse of the Sioux. Then troops under Ranald Mackenzie routed Northern Cheyenne under Dull Knife in the battle named after that famous Northern Cheyenne leader.
Cheyenne resistance had ended. Dull Knife’s band was placed in the Indian Territory among the Southern Cheyenne. Spurred by scarce food rations, an outbreak of malaria, and a longing for their homeland in Wyoming and Montana, Dull Knife and his followers made an epic flight northward in September 1877. Crossing lands now developed by non-Indians—having ranches, farms, roads, and railroads—the approximately 300 Cheyenne avoided a pursuing force of 13,000 for six weeks before they were finally caught. Many Cheyenne died in the bloody roundup, including Dull Knife’s daughter. Dull Knife and others surrendered on the Sioux reservation at Pine Ridge in South Dakota. But other Cheyenne made it to the
Cheyenne painted shield (taken by Custer on the Washita River in 1868)
Tongue River in Montana. In 1884, after further negotiations, the Northern Cheyenne were finally granted reservation lands in Montana.
World History
