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>> A little overview of what went on, here:
The Northern Cheyennes - The Cheyenne Nation of Indians, basically divides into two different camps in the 1830s:
The Southern Cheyennes, for which Cheyenne Bottoms were named, where we were the other day,
were primarily people who hunted in Kansas and Colorado.
The Northern Cheyennes were people who primarily stayed in Montana and South Dakota.
Most of their holy sites are in the South Dakota Black Hills.
In 1876, the Northern Cheyennes participate with the Lakotas in the defeat of Custer and the 7th Calvary, at Little Big Horn in Montana.
So, you all know that story.
Shortly after that happened, the U.S. Army had such a deluge of forces on the Northern Plains,
that all of those Indians who defeated Custer were driven on to reservations, very quickly.
In the case of the Northern Cheyennes, they had such an affiliation, such a camaraderie with the Lakota Sioux,
that the Army decided the best thing to do was to try to detach them from that area, completely,
so they could not ally with them anymore, in the future.
So, the idea was the send them to Indian Territory, what we now call Oklahoma.
What the Bureau of Indian Affairs was trying to do was to consolidate lots and lots of different tribes in one, large reservation in Oklahoma,
to make them easier to deal with.
That worked for a few tribes like the Pawnees, the Osages, folks who were from this general part of the country, anyway.
In the case of the Northern Cheyennes, you're dealing with people who are used to vast, wide open spaces, and long, extended winters.
They're not used to the hot, tropical climates that you get down there, along the Canadian River, near Oklahoma City.
For various reasons, what happens is there were about a thousand Northern Cheyennes sent to Oklahoma, in the fall of 1877.
A year later, the tribe had suffered an enormous infant mortality rate, there had been a malaria epidemic,
and there had been problems in trying to feed all of these Indians, through the Bureau of Indian Affairs,
so 353 Northern Cheyennes, about a third of the tribe, under two chiefs, Dull Knife and Little Wolf, just decided "To Hell with this, we're going home.
We don't have permission to go, but we're going, anyway."
So, these were two large bands under two chiefs, that in the fall of 1878, they leave Indian Territory.
They get on their horses, some of them ride, some of them walk. Their plan was to go all the way back to Montana.
Along the way, they're chased by the U.S. Army.
They leave the Darlington agency, which is pretty close to Oklahoma City, and they come up through Northern Oklahoma and Southern Kansas.
They come right through, about the area south of Dodge City.
There were a number of skirmishes with Calvary along the way, who were chasing them.
The Army is very disorganized, their forces are very thin, and the Frontier Army is not all that efficient, anyway.
By the end of September... (What's the date in September? )
>> The 27th was when the battle took place, so you're actually on the 25th.
So, September 25th to 27th, this band of Northern Cheyennes, 353 total, men, women and children, come into this area.
There were no towns in this vicinity. This was an absolute frontier.
At this point, I'll turn it over to you, as far as how the battle itself played out, in this landscape.
>> This site is important for several reasons:
Number one: the last Indian battle between the Northern Cheyenne and the military occurred right here, in Kansas. This was the last battle site.
It was also the last battle in which a military officer was mortally wounded. He died enroute to Fort Wallace.
That was Lieutenant Colonel William H. Lewis, probably one of the highest-ranking officers killed in any of the Indian Wars.
A very interesting man to read about, and to study.
Any time there was an uprising of any kind, like the Seminole Wars, or the Mormon Uprising,
Colonel Lewis was usually sent to squelch it, or to oversee what was going on.
As Dr. Lieker said, the Northern Cheyenne came here on September 25th, some two days before the battle.
They were actually down in the valley of the Punished Woman's Fork, which would be the area down there you see, the farmed ground.
For the Cheyenne, this was an area that was not new to them. They had been here a number of different times, on occasion.
They knew that this place had plenty of water, plenty of game, but more than anything, it had protection.
They were determined that this was probably the only place between here and the Sand Hills of Western Nebraska
that afforded the kind of protection that were going to need, to fight with the military. At that point in time, it was a matter of life and death.
They were willing to fight the very death, because they did not want to go back to the Darlington agency,
where they had been, as Dr. Lieker had told you about.
On the 25th, the women and children set about, doing the breast works, building the rifle pits, and so on.
Men went out and got game, and so on, and made preparations for the fight that they knew would be coming.
They had a couple days to rest up, which they needed. Some said there was even a wedding that took place. I don't know if that's true, or not.
Other sources said a baby was born, which would be a good omen for them.
I don't know if that's true or not, either. I haven't really researched those aspects.
Anyway, on the 27th, at about 4:00 in the afternoon,
in came one of the scouts for the Northern Cheyenne, saying there were a bunch of soldiers coming that way.
Of course, he was referring to the military foot soldiers. He said it was "like an angry snake, coming across the horizon."
What he was seeing was the dust from all the wagons and the military personnel, up in the sky,
and it looked like an angry snake was coming toward him.
So, they got ready for the battle that was to take place.
Actually, the battle started down... you see the trees, way down there? That's where Camp Christy is.
That's actually where the wagon trains came from the south. About where the white tanks are is where the military would have came.
They would have crossed Latta Creek a little bit north of where the tanks are, on the west side of the highway.
They would have crossed Latta Creek, and the military would have came up through here -
- up through there, excuse me, about where Camp Christy is. We won't go down there, today.
Most every point that you see out here, projectile point, would be where the Indians would have located their breast works,
and we'll show you some of those.
Now, these two points down here - there's a point, see, right down here, on the other side of the dam?
There's a point there, and there's one on the other side.
Little Wolf was actually a military tactician. He was the one that devised the battle plan.
His plan was to try to draw the soldiers into this area, right where the dam is, right here.
He had personnel on each of these points. So, that was the plan, to try to draw the men here.
And, of course, the military, once they got across the creek, and got some wagons stuck down there, and they had to get them out.
It was kind of chaos for them.
The way it worked was usually your military scouts would be the ones that would be in front. In this case, it would be personnel -
They were not Indian scouts as much as they were personnel that had been hired by the military.
Hoodoo Brown was one of them, Ben Jackson, Amos Chapman, some of those old time guys, and they knew this area pretty well.
They'd been up in here a number of different times.
They were the ones that were first, followed by the officers and so on. The last things that came were the wagons, and so on.
Anyway, the Cheyenne placed some of the women and children outside, to try and draw the military into this area, right here.
There's two different theories on it. One is that one of the young braves shot early, and that was the end of that. They didn't get them drawn in.
So, the battle was on. It started about 5:00 in the afternoon.
It was on a Friday, we know that. It was a day like today, kind of windy. It was overcast.
By 7:00 in the evening, the battle was pretty much over with, and I'll tell you what happened, then.
What we're going to do this morning - you may want to take a look, over here, just to give you an idea of how the terrain is.
This canyon that comes up through here, this is called the "Snake Head" of this canyon.
If you look down there, that is where the den was, where they placed the women and children.
You can't see it, but we're going to go down there, and you can actually go into it, if you want.
But, if you get over here, you cannot see the snake head of this canyon, at all. So, it's a place where they could be protected, and so on.
If you look straight across over there, not on this first level, but the second level, you see some rocks?
That's one of the original rifle pits, over there.
This is where most people think that the battle took place, right here. It didn't.
The battle actually took place, more or less, over on that hillside, over there.
The reason was the Cheyenne were not going to let the military get this close to the women and children.
Actually, the military started the battle way down to the south, and moved forward, in different skirmish lines.
The reason we know that was that in 1994, there was a map that was discovered,
that was an original map drawn on the day of battle, by Corporal Sharn McFadden.
He actually drew this map, and it had been in the possession of the McFadden family for a number of years, when it surfaced.
It shows that there were skirmish lines of the military, as they moved their forces up this way.
We were able to determine from that map - you can go right down and you can find the 45-70 casings,
right where those skirmish lines were, so we knew.
Up until that time, everybody thought the battle took place, up in this area. But, it didn't. They weren't going to let them get this close to them.
So, we'll go over there. I think the first thing we'll do, we'll go down and look at the cave.
It may be a little easier, if you go over here.
The horses are down on the other end of the canyon.
The Army manages to segregate this herd of ponies from the Cheyennes, and they basically destroy them.
All of the horses were shot to death.
They start moving north. What happens on September 30th and October 1st,
they get close to the town of Oberlin, Kansas, in Decatur and Rawlins Counties.
Up to this point, they've been fighting mostly soldiers, they've been stealing horses and livestock from ranchers, in Southern Kansas.
When they get up into that vicinity, they encounter farmers. There was a large Czech community that moved into that neighborhood.
Something like forty white settlers were killed by the Northern Cheyenne.
A lot of this have been interpreted as acts of revenge for the Army's destruction of their horse herd, here.
Lots of civilian deaths, women and girls are raped. It's a terrible story that happens, up in Northwestern Kansas.
From there, the cross the Union, and keep heading north into Nebraska.
Basically - and I'll condense this as much as I can - what happens then is that the group splits into two factions.
One, under Little Wolf, keeps going north, and retreats into Montana, and they actually make it there, through the winter time.
They eventually surrender to the Army the following spring, in 1879.
The group that stays with Dull Knife, mostly the wounded, the elderly, and children,
they surrendered to the Army at Fort Robinson, Nebraska, pretty close to the Black Hills.
The Army houses them in a barracks, at the fort.
What happens on January 9th - and this is the dead of winter, mind you - the group under Dull Knife breaks out of the barracks.
The Army shoots a bunch of them down, at the fort itself.
A group of sixty-five retreat into the hills west of Fort Robinson, about 20 miles, and are all shot to death by the Army. It's a fair massacre.
Lots of wounded, as well as fatalities.
What comes out of that, is that the Eastern media picks up on the part of the story about the deaths of the Indians at Fort Robinson, killed by the Army.
It creates this groundswell of political support for the creation of a Northern Cheyenne Reservation in Montana.
So, the tribe is really splintered at this time. Some were in Montana, some were still in Nebraska,
some were brought back to Kansas for trial, for the crimes against people in the Oberlin area, and some are shipped back to Indian Territory.
Then you had about seven hundred that never left Indian Territory.
Finally, in 1884, the President signs a new order for a reservation in their homeland of Montana,
and the tribe is reassembled there, over the next few years.
That is, it created enough public support among sympathetic whites, that today, it's still an active Reservation.
It's located close to the Little Big Horn site, they share territory with the Crows.
It's a very poor reservation. Lame Deer is their capital.
The Northern Cheyennes are still a northern people. There are hardly any left in Oklahoma.
Donna, do you want to talk a little bit about your family's role?
>> All I can say is that my great-grandparents settled in Rawlins County in 1876, three years before the raid.
I had three great-great-uncles killed by these Indians. One was my in-law, and two were my great-grandfather's brothers.
The women and the girls were raped, and ravaged.
>> Tell them what the family name was.
This was by Ludell in Rawlins County, east of Atwood. There's a monument to the Genosec brothers, there.
>> This is a story that creates a lot of victims on both sides. The Cheyennes were creating victims, and were also victims, themselves.
It's a story with a lot of moral complexity.
If you're familiar with the writer Mari Sandoz, she did a book in the 1950s, titled "Cheyenne Autumn",
in which she writes about all this from the Indian point of view.
>> This is probably the most well-defined rifle pit that we have, that is original.
You can see how they used the rocks, they laid it right in here. This would have been dug down. Women and children actually dug these.
I've come out here with a spade, before, a shovel. If you try to dig through this ground, it's amazingly hard.
What they do with this, this is called "gyp".
That's why, down south, where one of the skirmish lines is, they've already destroyed one of those, because they dug this off.
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