The Battle of the Washita River (also called Battle of the Washita or the Washita Massacre) occurred on November 27, 1868, when Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's 7th U.S. Cavalry attacked Black Kettle's Southern Cheyenne camp on the Washita River (the present-day Washita Battlefield National Historic Site near Cheyenne, Oklahoma).
The Cheyenne camp was the most isolated band of a major winter encampment along the river of numerous Native American tribal bands, totaling thousands of people. Custer's forces attacked the village because scouts had found it by tracking the trail of an Indian party that had raided white settlers. Black Kettle and his people had been at peace and were seeking peace. Custer's soldiers killed women and children in addition to warriors, although they also took many captives to serve as hostages and human shields. The number of Cheyenne killed in the attack has been disputed since the first reports.
Background
After the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho signed the Medicine Lodge Treaty, they were – according to the final treaty text as affirmed by Congress – required to move south from present-day Kansas and Colorado to a new reservation in Indian Territory (modern Oklahoma). The actual oral accord of the treaty negotiations, however, had guaranteed the Cheyenne their traditional hunting lands as long as there was sufficient buffalo to justify the chase, a crucial treaty stipulation that was tacitly dropped in the subsequent ratification process. This forced the Cheyenne to give up their traditional territory for one with little arable land away from buffalo, their main source of meat.
Months of fragile peace survived raids between warring Kaw Indians and Southern Cheyennes, but in summer 1868, war parties of Southern Cheyenne and allied Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, Northern Cheyenne, Brulé and Oglala warriors attacked white settlements in western Kansas, southeast Colorado, and northwest Texas. Among these raids were those along the Solomon and Saline rivers in Kansas, which began August 10, 1868. The warriors killed at least 15 white settlers, wounded others, and were reported to have raped some women, as well as taking others captive to be adopted into their tribes.
In 1897, Kansas Rep. Horace L. Moore remarked at a meeting of the Kansas State Historical Society that "The total of losses from September 12, 1868, to February 9, 1869, exclusive of casualties incident to military operations, was 158 men murdered, sixteen wounded and forty-one scalped. Three scouts were killed, fourteen women outraged, one man was captured, four women and twenty-four children were carried off. Nearly all of these losses occurred in what we then called western Kansas, although the Saline, Solomon and Republican do not seem so very far west now".
On August 19, 1868, Colonel Edward W. Wynkoop, Indian Agent for the Cheyenne and Arapaho at Fort Larned, Kansas, interviewed Little Rock, a chief in Black Kettle's Cheyenne village. Little Rock told what he had learned about the raids along the Saline and Solomon rivers. According to Little Rock's account, a war party of about 200 Cheyenne from a camp above the forks of Walnut Creek departed camp intending to go out against the Pawnee. Instead, they raided white settlements along the Saline and Solomon rivers. Some of the warriors returned to Black Kettle's camp. Little Rock learned from them what took place. Little Rock identified the warriors most responsible for the raids and agreed to try to have them delivered to white authorities.
Native Americans in November 1868
Winter camps on the Washita River
By early November 1868, Black Kettle's camp joined other Southern Cheyenne and other tribal bands at the Washita River, which they called Lodgepole River, after local pine trees. Black Kettle's village was the westernmost of a series of winter camps, of Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, and Kiowa-Apache bands, that ran ten to 15 miles along the Washita River.
Black Kettle's village was several miles west of the rest of the camps and consisted of around 50 Cheyenne lodges, plus one or two lodges of visiting Arapaho and two of visiting Lakota, for a total of about 250 inhabitants. Little Rock, the only council chief who had remained with Black Kettle since the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864, lived with his family in the village. It also included the families of Big Man, Wolf Looking Back, Clown, Cranky Man, Scabby Man, Half Leg, Bear Tongue, and Roll Down.
Downriver from Black Kettle's camp, the Washita River looped northward in a large oxbow. At its northern portion was the Arapaho camp of Little Raven, Big Mouth, Yellow Bear, and Spotted Wolf, a total of about 180 lodges. At the bottom of the loop was a large Southern Cheyenne camp under Medicine Arrows. Followers of Little Robe, Sand Hill, Stone Calf, Old Little Wolf (Big Jake), and Black White Man made up one large village, and nearby was a smaller Cheyenne village consisting of the followers of Old Whirlwind. These two Cheyenne villages, together comprising about 129 lodges, were situated along the oxbow southeast of Little Raven's Arapaho camp and west of a small Kiowa camp headed by Kicking Bird.
The Kiowa leaders Satanta, Lone Wolf, and Black Eagle had moved their villages to the Fort Cobb area. Downriver were other camps of Comanche and Kiowa-Apache. Overall, a total of about 6,000 Native Americans were in winter camp along the upper Washita River.
November 20 meeting at Fort Cobb
In mid-November, a party headed by Black Kettle and Little Robe of the Cheyenne, and Big Mouth and Spotted Wolf of the Arapaho, arrived at Fort Cobb to visit the post trader, William "Dutch Bill" Griffenstein. Griffenstein's wife Cheyenne Jennie, a Cheyenne originally of Black Kettle's camp, had died around October 10. Griffenstein had sent runners to inform her parents of her death, perhaps also sending a message to urge Black Kettle to come to talk with Colonel (Brevet Major General) William B. Hazen about making peace. The four chiefs met with Hazen on November 20, with Captain Henry Alvord of the Tenth Cavalry documenting the conversations.
Black Kettle began by saying to Hazen, "The Cheyennes, when south of the Arkansas, do not wish to return to the north side because they feared trouble there, but were continually told that they had better go there, as they would be rewarded for so doing." Hardoff notes that by the terms of the Medicine Lodge Treaty, the Cheyenne-Arapaho reservation had the Arkansas River as its northern boundary. In April 1868, the U.S. Army distributed food provisions due the Cheyenne and Arapaho at Fort Larned and Fort Dodge, both north of the Arkansas. On August 9, 1868, they had distributed treaty annuities in the form of arms and ammunition at Fort Larned rather than south of the Arkansas.
Black Kettle continued, asking if he might move his people south to Fort Cobb:
The Cheyennes do not fight at all this side of the Arkansas; they do not trouble Texas, but north of the Arkansas they are almost always at war. When lately north of the Arkansas, some young Cheyennes were fired upon and then the fight began. I have always done my best 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, and I would be glad to move all my people down this way; I could then keep them all quietly near camp. My camp is now on the Washita, 40 miles east of the Antelope Hills, and I have there about 180 lodges. I speak only for my own people; I cannot speak nor control the Cheyenne north of the Arkansas.
Big Mouth of the Arapaho spoke next, saying in part:
I never would have gone north of the Arkansas again, but my father there [the agent] sent for me time after time, saying it was the place for my people, and finally I went. No sooner had we got there than there was trouble. 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.
Hazen's October 13 orders from General William Tecumseh Sherman, commander of the Military Division of the Missouri, had charged Hazen with making provision for Native Americans who wanted to stay out of the war. The orders stated if General Philip Sheridan had to invade the reservation to pursue hostile Native Americans, he needed to spare the "well-disposed". Sherman recommended that non-belligerent Native Americans camp near Fort Cobb. Hazen knew that Sheridan had already declared the Cheyenne and Arapaho to be "hostile", meaning they were subject to attack by the U.S. Army. Hazen told the four chiefs he could not make peace with them. He recommended against their coming to Fort Cobb, as their presence would jeopardize the peace of the Kiowa and Comanche already camped there. He told them,
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. Therefore, you must go back to your country, and 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.
Reporting to Sherman on November 22, Hazen said, "[T]o have made peace with them would have brought to my camp most of those now on the war path south of the Arkansas; and as General Sheridan is to punish those at war and might follow them in afterwards, a second Chivington affair might occur, which I could not prevent." Hazen reported that while the chiefs seemed sincere, the Kiowa and Comanche at Fort Cobb said the young warriors who accompanied the chiefs were pleased that peace had not been made. They boasted that the Lakota and other northern bands would come down the following spring to "clean out the entire country." Hazen took the young warriors' boasts so seriously that he requested two more companies of the 10th Cavalry from Fort Arbuckle and two howitzers to remain for a week or two at Fort Cobb.
Black Kettle's return to the Washita
Black Kettle and the other chiefs departed Fort Cobb on about November 21 with food supplied by Griffenstein, traveling through storm conditions. They reached their villages on the Washita on the evening of November 26.
The evening before, on November 25, a war party of as many as 150 warriors, which included young men of the camps of Black Kettle, Medicine Arrows, Little Robe, and Old Whirlwind, had returned to the Washita encampments. They had raided white settlements in the Smoky Hill River country with the Dog Soldiers.
Major Joel Elliott of the Seventh Cavalry found the trail of the raiders on November 26, which drew Custer and his forces to the Washita. On November 26, the same day that Black Kettle returned to the Washita, a party of Kiowa returning from raiding the Utes passed through Black Kettle's camp on their way to their own village. They told the Cheyenne that as they had passed near the Antelope Hills on the Canadian River, they had seen a large trail leading southward toward the Washita camps. The Cheyenne discounted the information, as they did not believe U.S. soldiers would operate so far south in such wintry conditions. The Kiowa proceeded to their own village further east along the river, but Trails the Enemy decided to stay overnight with friends in Black Kettle's camp.
Also on November 26, Crow Neck, a returning warrior, told Bad Man (also known as Cranky Man) that he had left an exhausted horse along the trail to rest. When he went back to retrieve the horse that day, he saw moving figures to the north who looked like soldiers. Fearful, he turned back without getting his horse. Bad Man doubted Crow Neck had seen soldiers; he said perhaps he had a guilty conscience from having gone against the chiefs' wishes by joining the war party. Crow Neck told no one else what he had seen, fearing that he might be laughed at, or chastised by Black Kettle for having been part of the raid.
On the evening of November 26, Black Kettle held a council in his lodge with the principal men of his village to convey what he had learned at Fort Cobb about Sheridan's war plans. Discussion lasted into the early morning hours of November 27. The council decided that after the foot-deep snow cleared, they would send out runners to talk with the soldiers. They wanted to clear up misunderstandings and make it clear that Black Kettle's people wanted peace. Meanwhile, they decided to move camp the next day downriver to be closer to the other Indian camps.