The Last American Frontier

by Frederic L. Paxson

It was Black Kettle's camp of Cheyenne and Arapaho that they had found in a strip of heavy timber along the river. After reconnoitring Custer divided his force into four columns for simultaneous attacks upon the sleeping village. At daybreak "my men charged the village and reached the lodges before the Indians were aware of our presence. The moment the charge was ordered the band struck up 'Garry Owen,' and with cheers that strongly reminded me of scenes during the war, every trooper, led by his officer, rushed towards the village." For several hours a promiscuous fight raged up and down the ravine, with Indians everywhere taking to cover, only to be prodded out again. Fifty-one lodges in all fell into Custer's hands; 103 dead Indians, including Black Kettle himself, were found later. "We captured in good condition 875 horses, ponies, and mules; 241 saddles, some of very fine and costly workmanship; 573 buffalo robes, 390 buffalo skins for lodges, 160 untanned robes, 210 axes, 140 hatchets, 35 revolvers, 47 rifles, 535 pounds of powder, 1050 pounds of lead, 4000 arrows and arrowheads, 75 spears, 90 bullet moulds, 35 bows and quivers, 12 shields, 300 pounds of bullets, 775 lariats, 940 buckskin saddle-bags, 470 blankets, 93 coats, 700 pounds of tobacco."

As the day advanced, Custer's triumph seemed likely to turn into defeat. The Cheyenne village proved to be only the last of a long string of villages that extended down the Washita for fifteen miles or more, and whose braves rode up by hundreds to see the fight. A general engagement was avoided, however, and with better luck and more discretion than he was one day to have, Custer marched back to Camp Supply on December 3, his band playing gayly the tune of battle, "Garry Owen." The commander in his triumphal procession was followed by his scouts and trailers, and the captives of his prowess—a long train of Indian widows and orphans.

The decisive blow which broke the power of the southwest tribes had been struck, and Black Kettle had carried on his last raid,—if indeed he had carried on this one at all—but as the reports came in it became evident that the merits of the triumph were in doubt. The Eastern humanitarians were shocked at the cold-blooded attack upon a camp of sleeping men, women, and children, forgetting that if Indians were to be fought this was the most successful way to do it, and was no shock to the Indians' own ideals of warfare and attack. The deeper question was whether this camp was actually hostile, whether the tribes had not abandoned the war-path in good faith, whether it was fair to crush a tribe that with apparent earnestness begged peace because it could not control the excesses of some of its own braves. It became certain, at least, that the War Department itself had fallen victim to that vice with which it had so often reproached the Indian Office—failure to produce a harmony of action among several branches of the service.

The Indian Office had no responsibility for the battle of the Washita. It had indeed issued arms to the Cheyenne in August, but only with the approval of the military officer commanding Forts Larned and Dodge, General Alfred Sully, "an officer of long experience in Indian affairs." In the early summer all the tribes had been near these forts and along the Santa Fé trail. After Congress had voted its half million to feed the hungry, Sherman had ordered that the peaceful hungry among the southern tribes should be moved from this locality to the vicinity of old Fort Cobb, in the west end of Indian Territory on the Washita River.

During September, while Sheridan was gathering his armament at Fort Hays, Sherman was ordering the agents to take their peaceful charges to Fort Cobb. With the major portion of the tribes at war it would be impossible for the troops to make any discrimination unless there should be an absolute separation between the well-disposed and the warlike. He proposed to allow the former a reasonable time to get to their new abode and then beg the President for an order "declaring all Indians who remain outside of their lawful reservations" to be outlaws. He believed that by going to war these tribes had violated their hunting rights. Superintendent Murphy thought he saw another Sand Creek in these preparations. Here were the tribes ordered to Fort Cobb; their fall annuity goods were on the way thither for distribution; and now the military column was marching in the same direction.

In the meantime General W. B. Hazen had arrived at Fort Cobb on November 7 and had immediately voiced his fear that "General Sheridan, acting under the impression of hostiles, may attack bands of Comanche and Kiowa before they reach this point." He found, however, most of these tribes, who had not gone to war this season, encamped within reach on the Canadian and Washita rivers,—5000 of the Comanche and 1500 of the Kiowa. Within a few days Cheyenne and Arapaho began to join the settlements in the district, Black Kettle bringing in his band to the Washita, forty miles east of Antelope Hills, and coming in person to Fort Cobb for an interview with General Hazen on November 20.

"I have always done my best," he protested, "to keep my young men quiet, but some will not listen, and since the fighting began I have not been able to keep them all at home. But we all want peace." To which added Big Mouth, of the Arapaho: "I came to you because I wish to do right.... I do not want war, and my people do not, but although we have come back south of the Arkansas, the soldiers follow us and continue fighting, and we want you to send out and stop these soldiers from coming against us."

To these, General Hazen, fearful as he was of an unjust attack, responded with caution. Sherman had spoken of Fort Cobb in his orders to Sheridan, as "aimed to hold out the olive branch with one hand and the sword in the other. But it is not thereby intended that any hostile Indians shall make use of that establishment as a refuge from just punishment for acts already done. Your military control over that reservation is as perfect as over Kansas, and if hostile Indians retreat within that reservation, ... they may be followed even to Fort Cobb, captured, and punished." It is difficult to see what could constitute the fact of peaceful intent if coming in to Fort Cobb did not. But Hazen gave to Black Kettle cold comfort: "I am sent here as a peace chief; all here is to be peace; but north of the Arkansas is General Sheridan, the great war chief, and I do not control him; and he has all the soldiers who are fighting the Arapahoes and Cheyennes.... If the soldiers come to fight, you must remember they are not from me, but from that great war chief, and with him you must make peace.... I cannot stop the war.... You must not come in again unless I send for you, and you must keep well out beyond the friendly Kiowas and Comanches." So he sent the suitors away and wrote, on November 22, to Sherman for more specific instructions covering these cases. He believed that Black Kettle and Big Mouth were themselves sincere, but doubted their control over their bands. These were the bands which Custer destroyed before the week was out, and it is probable that during the fight they were reënforced by braves from the friendly lodges of Satanta's Kiowa and Little Raven's Arapaho.

Whatever might have been a wise policy in treating semi-hostile Indian tribes, this one was certainly unsatisfactory. It is doubtful whether the war was ever so great as Sherman imagined it. The injured tribes were unquestionably drawn to Fort Cobb by a desire for safety; the army was in the position of seeming to use the olive branch to assemble the Indians in order that the sword might the better disperse them. There is reasonable doubt whether Black Kettle had anything to do with the forays. Murphy believed in him and cited many evidences of his friendly disposition, while Wynkoop asserted positively that he had been encamped on Pawnee Fork all through the time when he was alleged to have been committing depredations on the Saline. The army alone had been no more successful in producing obvious justice than the army and Indian Office together had been. Yet whatever the merits of the case, the power of the Cheyenne and their neighbors was permanently gone.

During the winter of 1868–1869 Sheridan's army remained in the vicinity of Fort Cobb, gathering the remnants of the shattered tribes in upon their reservation. The Kiowa and Comanche were placed at last on the lands awarded them at the Medicine Lodge treaties, while the Arapaho and Cheyenne once more had their abiding-place changed in August, 1869, and were settled down along the upper waters of the Washita, around the valley of their late defeat.