Battle of Washita River - Background

Background

After they signed the Medicine Lodge Treaty, the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho were required to remove south from present-day Kansas and Colorado to a new reservation in Indian Territory (modern Oklahoma). This forced them to give up their traditional territory for one with little arable land and away from buffalo, their main source of meat and a center of their culture. Months of fragile peace survived raids between warring Kaw Indians and Southern Cheyennes.

But in the summer of 1868, war parties of Southern Cheyenne, and allied Arapaho, Kiowa, Comanche, Northern Cheyenne, Brulé and Oglala Lakota, and Pawnee 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.

On August 19, 1868, Colonel Edward W. Wynkoop, Indian Agent for the Cheyenne and Arapaho at Fort Lyon, Kansas, interviewed Little Rock, who was 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 Cheyennes 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 named the warriors most responsible for the raids and agreed to try to have them delivered to white authorities.