Sunday, November 27, 2022

The Washita Massacre and Death of Black Kettle


November 27, 1868 is one of the most disputed days in the Indian Wars; it is the day Custer ordered the 7th Cavalry to murder 103 women and children and elders and the Southern Cheyenne Peace Chief Black Kettle. There had been raids in the Indian Territories, in what is now Oklahoma, by several bands of the Southern Cheyenne and Arapaho after they had signed the Medicine Lodge Treaty agreeing to move from Colorado and Kansas to the assigned lands in Oklahoma. These raids were partly related to the fact that the final treaty did not have language that the Southern Cheyenne had agreed to regarding their traditional hunting grounds. In the oral agreement, they had the right to hunt the bison in Southern Colorado and Kansas, but the final document had removed this language.

The tribes were preparing for wintering along the Washita River which was known to them as the lodgepole river. There were several encampments, and some were the warriors who had been fighting with settlers and the cavalry. On November 20 Black Kettle and three other chiefs had tried to arrange passage south of the Arkansas River which was the boundary line but because of orders by General Sherman that there existed a state of hostilities regardless of the Medicine Lodge Treaty. So they got supplies for his band and headed for the Washita river and traditional wintering areas quickly hoping to connect to other groups.

Two events combined to cut off Black Kettle’s band. A powerful winter storm on Nov. 26 moved into the plains bringing travel with women and children to a near standstill. Also, on Nov. 25th a group of 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.

So Black Kettle’s band was basically trapped without their men when Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's 7th U.S. Cavalry came up on their camp guided by Cheyenne enemies the Osage. On the early morning of the 27th, the attack came with Custer’s forces killing indiscriminately, and mercilessly any Cheyenne and Arapaho they found. By Custer’s own report 103 members of the camp, including all the women and children were killed.

Some historians have debated whether this was indeed a massacre since Black Kettle knew a condition of war existed and there were armed men in the camp, however with the total annihilation of the camp and the majority being women and children it is hard to dispute the term


Image: The 1868 Battle of the Washita by Steven Lang
 

Sources:

https://www.nps.gov/articles/washita.htm

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