In 1807 the Government built its first military post on Osage
territory at Fort Osage in the Missouri River. In 1817 Fort
Gibson was founded on the Arkansas river. The Osage early
became friends and ally of the United States troops on the western
frontier and assisted them in many ways in their expeditions
against other Indian tribes.
When the great Santa Fe trail across their territory became a
mighty highway of wagon commerce, the government for protection of
the wagon trains of this highway built Fort Lyon near the mouth of
the Walnut river in what is now Barton county, Kansas, and later
Fort Larned and Fort Dodge on the same trail. The Osage,
because of their sagacity and fidelity were employed as trailers
and scouts around these Government posts. Generals Dodge,
Sherman, Sheridan, Custer, and Forsyth[01]
have each, in public documents, paid tribute to the skill and
daring of these Osage scouts, for they always traveled in the lead
of the army, protecting it from surprise or ambush on the part of
the enemy.
Among the more noted of these Osage scouts were Hard Rope, Little
Beaver, Big Wildcat, Tah-Le and Toby Mongrain. A noted
example of the prowess of these scouts was the recapture from the
Cheyennes and Arapahoes of Mrs. Annie Brewster Morgan and Miss
Sarah White, two young Kansas women, in March, 1869. They
had been captured in the great raids of August, 1868, of Cheyennes
and Arapahoes on the settlers of northwestern Kansas along the
Soloman and Saline rivers and their tributaries. It will be
remembered that these Indians visited Fort Hays that year and were
given ample supplies by the war department sufficient to last them
on their home journey. This was on the third of August.
The next day they had departed from the fort, and five days later
the outrages on the Saline began.
On August 12, 1868, Mrs. Annie Brewster Morgan heard a gun fired
in the direction of the garden of her home on the upper White
Marsh branch, in Ottawa county, Kansas. Looking out of the
cabin door she saw her husband, to whom she had been married but a
few months, lying on the ground about the middle of the garden and
a band of Indians rushing up to the door. She had no time to
escape, and was soon tied on a pony and hurried away, the Indians
not stopping to scalp her husband, who was not dead, but
unconscious from a shattered leg. On the same day about
fifteen miles from the Morgan home the White family was attacked
and all were murdered except Sarah, a sixteen-year-old girl.
The Cheyennes hurried the captives away to the south three hundred
miles to their home village on the Washita. These women had
never met before and knew nothing of each other until they met on
their way to the Washita. They were later traded from one
chief to another until finally both came into possession of one
man. It will be remembered that these outrages led to the
winter campaign of 1868-69,[02]
inaugurated by the War Department. It was believed that a
winter campaign would find all these Indians on their reservations
where a just punishment could be meted out, and the whole tribe be
made to realize and feel the power of the “mailed hand” of the
Government.
Governor Samuel J. Crawford, of Kansas, was invited by General
Sheridan and the War Deparment to raise a regiment of Kansas
troops to assist in this winter campaign. The Governor
complied, and farther, he resigned his office to become colonel of
regiment which was known as the 19th Kansas.
Among the members of the 19th was young Brewster, the
brother of Anna Brewster Morgan, the captive woman. The
Kansas regiment, for lack of proper guidance, did not reach
Custer’s command in time to participate in the battle of Washita[03]
but on the evening of that day, as Custer was slowly retreating
from the horde of Indians who had rallied from near-by camps and
were hanging upon the rear of his army, Colonel Crawford overtook
Custer’s wagon train and when Custer arrived he was delighted to
find himself reinforced and able to withstand farther attack.
Hardly could the troops of the 19th be restrained form
opening fire upon the hordes of painted and mounted Arapahoes and
Cheyennes that rode in circles around the camp of the now
impregnable army. Custer, upon securing his camp and wagon
train in a safe position, ordered all hostilities on the part of
his troops to cease. Loud were the protests against this
order on the part of the men of the 19th, who were more
than eager to avenge the outrages committed upon the settlers of
their state a few months before. But the general could not
be moved, although until pitch dark, the painted warriors of the
Washita, continued their wild riding and hurling of insults at the
troops, sometimes coming close enough to spit at them and to in
various ways demonstrate their venomous hatred of the white enemy.
“I never walked so far to see a circus in my life,” said a
member of the Kansas troops. But the Kansas boys all lived
to thank General Custer for his wisdom and foresight in suspending
hostilities. Custer was thinking of white prisoners that he
knew somewhere among these Indian tribes that were confronting
him. These Indians were mostly Arapohoes whose village was
six or seven miles below that of Black Kettle, and they had not
been able to get into the main battle of Washita, but had come up
later and joined in the pursuit of Custer. Had they been
camped with Black Kettle at the time that Custer struck his
village it is probable that the entire command would have been
annihilated and the story of the massacre of the Little Big Horn,
eight years later would never have been written.
Next day Custer succeeded in getting a conference with some of the
Arapahoes in which he induced them to repair to Fort Sill where
General Sheridan would be met and ample supplies for their
winter’s rations would be provided.
In searching over the battlefield of the Washita on November 27,
four days after the battle, for Major Joe. H. Elliot and his
command of fourteen men, who had been separated from Custer in the
course of the battle and had not been heard of since, the
searchers discovered the dead and mutilated bodies of their
comrades some two miles below Black Kettle’s village where they
had been surrounded and held for two days until their ammunition
was expended and the inevitable slaughter had taken place.
On the way back to camp, Doctor Bailey, of Topeka, surgeon of the
19th and member of the searching party, discovered the
body of a white woman and a little boy two years old. The
woman had been shot in the forehead and the child killed by
striking his head against a tree. The mother had a piece of
bread concealed in her bosom, as though she had attempted to
escape from the camp. The next morning the woman was laid on
a blanket on her side and the boy on her arm, and the men ordered
to march by to see if possibly someone might identify her.
It was Mrs. R. F. Blinn, captured by the Kiowas, October 9th,
with a train going from Lyon to Dodge. Her husband was killed at
the same time. The body of the woman and child were taken
along, and finally buried in the government cemetery at Fort
Arbuckle. On the 2nd of November a number of
Mexican traders had been in the Kiowa camp, and she had taken the
opportunity to send out a letter by them. It is dated
Saturday, November 7, 1868, and reached civilization and her
relatives by a circuitous journey several weeks later. The
letter follows:
“Kind friends, whoever you may be, I thank you for your kindness
to me and my child. You want me to let you know my wishes.
If you could only buy us of the Indians with ponies or anything
and let me come stay with you, and I would work, and do all I
could for you. If it is not too far to their camp and you are not
afraid to come I pray that you will try. They tell me, as
near as I can understand, they expect traders to come and they
will sell us to them. Can you find out by this man and let
me know if it is white men? If it is Mexicans, they would
sell us into slavery in Mexico. If you can do nothing for
me, write to W. T. Harrington, Ottawa, Franklin county Kansas, my
father; tell him we are with the Cheyennes, and they say when the
white men make peace we can go home. Tell him to write to
the Governor of Kansas about it and for them to make peace.
Send this to him. We were taken on the 9th of
October, on the Arkansas, below Fort Lyon. I cannot tell whether
they killed my husband or not. My name is Clara Blinn.
My little boy, Willie Blinn, is two years old. Do all you
can for me. Write to the peace commissioners to make peace
this fall. For our sakes do all you can and God will
bless you. If you can let me hear from you again; let me
know what you think about it. Write to my father; send him
this. Good-by.
Mrs. R. F. Blinn
I am well as can be expected, but my baby is very weak.”
It can well be imagined that the discovery of the dead and
mutilated troopers and the murdered white woman and child added
fuel to the fire of revenge that was already burning in the hearts
of the 19th Kansas. But Custer assured them that
in getting the Arapahoes and the Kiowas to go to Fort Arbuckle and
Fort Sill the ice had been broken for a general peace, and that
the white captives among the Cheyennes would be discovered and
released.
Arriving at Fort Sill, they found General Sheridan already there,
and after several days council with Yellow Robe, chief of the
Arapahoes, they were convinced that the Cheyennes who had fled
from the battle of the Washita westward had with them the captive
women, Mrs. Morgan and Miss White.
Indian messengers from the now peaceful Arapahoes were sent after
the runaway Cheyennes to induce them to come in and make peace.
After weeks of waiting the peace messengers returned with the
statement that the Cheyennes refused to come in or make any
overtures of peace whatever. Custer then asked permission of
General Sheridan to take fifty men and with the famous California
Joe for a guide set out to overtake the Cheyennes, as he believed
if he could get in touch with Little Robe and Medicine Arrow, the
head Chiefs, he could persuade them to make peace. On his
insisting he was allowed to undertake this expedition.
This was one of the most hazardous undertakings ever heard of.
It meant that fifty men went out in the midst of winter--the
hardest winter ever known in the southwest--to intercept four
thousand warlike, angry Cheyennes and make peace with them.
What would have been the result had this small body of men
overtaken the Cheyenne village, one shudders to conjecture.
But Providence, or the sagacity of the Indian in eluding his
pursuers, no doubt saved General Custer and his command in the
expedition. When they arrived at the point in the Wichita
mountains where the Arapahoes said they would find the Cheyenne
village, no trace of it could be found. After two weeks
scouting over the country west of the Wichita mountains, in which
they found not trace of the runaway tribe, they found themselves
on the point of starvation and a messenger was sent back to Fort
Sill to forward a supply train to meet them on their return trip.
After resting their starved and worn out horses for two days the
command started to return to Fort Sill, meeting the supply train
the second day of the return journey.
Great was the disappointment of the Kansas troops at Fort Sill
when the expedition returned without result. After two
days’ rest at the fort, the impetuous Custer again entered
General Sheridan’s tent and asked permission to make an
expedition in force against the Cheyennes.
“Give me,” he said, “my old troop of the 7th
Cavalry, the 19th Kansas, and my Osage scouts who were
with me at the battle of Washita, and I will follow them if need
be, to the Mexican border.”
General Sheridan readily consented, and the expedition was made up
as proposed and was on its way in three days. And here is
where the sagacity of the Indian in trailing an enemy is shown to
be superior to the white man. Going back over the same
territory he had traveled under the guidance of California Joe,
one of the best white scouts the army ever had, wherein he had
found no trace or trail of the Cheyennes, Hard Rope, one of the
Osage scouts, picked up a dim Indian trail. It was the trail
of the traveaux[04]
of a single lodge and was at least a month old. The Osage
scouts decided that the trail led southwest while the army was
traveling northwest, in which direction the Osage believed the
winter camp of the Cheyennes would be found. A council of a
few moments between Hard Rope and Little Beaver, who could speak a
few words of English and was spokesman for the Osage scouts took
place. General Custer was told that in their judgment the
trail led southwest, but that the village would be found to the
northwest. They said this trail indicated that the lodge of
a single hunter was on its way to join the lodges of other
scattered bands of hunters and that it indicated that at the
approach of spring the Indians were congregating with the idea of
moving northward as soon as the grass was sufficient enough to
sustain their ponies.
“Can you follow this trail?” asked Custer.
“Yes,” answered Hard Rope.
“Do you advise following this trail, or would you keep on in the
direction we are going until we strike another?”
“Better follow this one,’ said Little Beaver, “pretty soon
get big.”
All day long the army hung on this dim trail, following Hard Rope
and Big Wildcat, who were in the lead to pick out of this
trackless wilderness a trail over a month old which had been
burned over by prairie fire and all trace, to the eye of the white
man, absolutely obliterated. “ No bloodhound,” said General
Custer, “could equal these Osage trailers, for it was impossible
for us to see any marks or evidence of the trail until pointed out
by them. Sometimes it was a broken down weed, sometimes a
scant mark where a traveaux pole had raked across a dry buffalo
chip, but always there was some evidence which Hard Rope could
point out to prove that he was still holding on to it.”
Just at sundown of a hard and wearisome day’s march and some
fifteen miles from where they first encountered this trail they
came to a little stream of clear water bordered with a few
scattered trees, and in the valley of this stream was the plain
evidence of a recent camp ground of several lodges. This
camp had not been abandoned over two weeks and sure enough, as the
Indians had predicted, the trail from this camp led them
northward.
Next morning the order of march was carefully arranged. Hard
Rope and Big Wildcat took the trail and led out a half-mile in
front, followed by General Custer, Colonel Cook, and the other
army bringing up the rear. This was done that the sharp eye
of the Indian would always be in the lead and prevent any surprise
on the part of the Cheyennes. That day the army passed three
distinct camp grounds, showing that the army was traveling three
times as fast as had the Cheyennes.
The trail from here became a broad one, over one hundred lodges
being the estimate of the Osage. Little Beaver warned
General Custer to be on his guard continually, for he said the
Cheyenne ponies were weak and could make but a few miles a day,
and as the Indians did not suspect they were being followed, the
evidence showed they were deliberately moving toward a central
point where the entire tribe might be overtaken at any time.
The next day it rained nearly all day but the army made ten and
twelve miles. Everything now indicated that the Cheyennes
were but a day or two ahead. The army started at daybreak
the next morning, Hard Rope and Big Wildcat taking the lead as
usual and, while showing no fear of being in this advanced
position their precaution was watched with admiration by the
commanding general and his army. When they approached an
elevation or a hill, one would hold the ponies while the other
went forward on foot cautiously crawling to the crest and peering
over. If all was clear in front he signaled his companion to
bring on the ponies and they would ride forward.
About the middle of the afternoon of this day, Hard Rope, who was
making a reconnoisance on foot to the top of a hill, was seen to
drop close to the ground and hurry back to this pony which he
mounted and came galloping back to General Custer. He said
that a large drove of ponies in charge of herders was less than a
mile away moving slowly down a little valley. He thought a
great camp of Indians was near.
Custer sent Colonel Cook back to have the army close up and to
bring forward a body of fifteen troopers for personal protection
to follow him. In company with the four Osage scouts and his
Cheyenne interpreter Romeo, the General went immediately forward
but they found nothing of the horses or Indians in the valley
where Hard Rope had seen them. They had gone out of sight
around a bend in the valley a mile below. Making for an
elevation to the right of the valley to get a better view they saw
an Indian’s head appear above the hill and in a moment forty or
fifty others. Riding a short distance ahead of his small
guard, Custer signaled the Indians for a conference. One of
them soon rode down to him and told him that Medicine Arrow, the
head chief of the Cheyennes, was but a short distance away.
Custer sent him on ahead to inform Medicine Arrow of his presence
and demanding a conference. This the chief at once granted,
coming out to meet him on the way.
By this time Custer had been overtaken by Colonel Cook and the
guard of troopers he had sent for. The army was just coming
in sight some two miles away.
“How many men have you there?” asked Medicine Arrow, through
the interpreter as the saw the army approaching.
“Fifteen hundred,” answered General Custer, and the
countenance of the Indian fell.
Medicine Arrow then invited General Custer to return with him to
the village and the General, accompanied by his small body of
troopers, rode into what proved to be the main village in which
fully four thousand Cheyennes where gathered. Here a
conference of an hour or more took place, the white men and Osage
scouts keeping a sharp lookout for the white captive women they
were sure were in this village.
Custer asked Medicine Arrow to select him a camp ground which the
chief did, accompanying Custer to the spot. This camp ground
was about three quarters of a mile away, and wholly out of sight
of the Cheyenne village--a very suspicious circumstance and with
the general was by no means pleased.
Medicine Arrow then said he would return to the village and that a
little later on a large delegation of Cheyennes would call on the
General and take supper with him and have a peace smoke.
After the departure of Medicine Arrow Custer asked the Osage if
they had seen anything in the village to indicate that the white
women were there. They answered in the negative, but Hard
Rope said the women were there.
“Why do you think they are here?” asked Custer.
“Because the Cheyennes or part of them are fixing to run away.
They may be gone now.” answered Hard Rope.
The general himself was very suspicious. He had with him a
Cheyenne Girl named Mo-nah-see-tah, the daughter of Chief Little
Rock, who was killed at the battle of Washita and where the girl
was made prisoner. He brought her along thinking she might
be of service, and he told her he would restore her to her people.
She was very bright and had become much attached to the army.
Therefore the general believed that she could tell him for
certainty if the captive women were in the camp. Telling her
whose camp they had overtaken, he asked her if she knew whether or
not the white women were in this camp.
“Yes,” she answered, “this is the camp they are in, and I
will help you find them.”
Soon the promised delegation of Cheyenne chiefs came into the camp
but Medicine Arrow was not among them. He had not said he
would come back, but Custer expected him. There were fully a
hundred in the party, however, and they partook of the feast
spread with great relish and everything passed off pleasantly
until it was pointed out to the General that one by one his guests
were silently departing. This convinced the General that
Hard Rope’s statement was right and that the Cheyennes were
again running away.
He decided that peaceful overtures were going to fail and that a
bold stroke would be the only effective strategy. Therefore,
while the trooper’s bands were playing, he quietly notified his
officers to rally around him one at a time so as to excite no
suspicion on the part of the Indians. Meanwhile, the troops were
notified to be ready for an emergency at a moment’s warning.
When his men had placed themselves in position he indicated to
them four chiefs whom they were to seize. As this was done
pandemonium broke loose. For a few moments it seemed that a
battle was inevitable. The younger men of the Cheyennes,
numbering fifty or sixty persons, circled around their captured
chiefs flourishing their weapons and demanding their release.
Only for the fact that the chiefs themselves ordered their men not
to fire, bloodshed would have been inevitable.
Custer’s troops, especially the 19th Kansas, were as ready for a
fight as were the young Indians, and only the command of the
general himself prevented them from shooting into the howling band
of Indians began to break away a few at a time when they found the
road open for escape. Evidently their impression at first
was that they had been trapped and were the victims of treachery.
As soon as they had left and quiet was restored, General
Custer notified the chiefs that he know of their design to run
away and that he also knew that they had in their possession two
white women whose immediate release he demanded. He told
them that he would hold them hostages for the welfare of these
women and that he would continue to hold them until the women were
restored and the Cheyennes had made peace and returned to their
reservations on the Washita.
The most influential one of them, Little Robe, he sent to bring in
Medicine Arrow, telling Little Robe to return with him as he would
not again capture or hold him. Medicine Arrow refused to
come but sent word back by Little Robe that if Custer would
release the other chiefs they would talk about giving up the white
women with them, and it was a great relief to Custer to know
positively that they were there.
Meanwhile the Cheyenne camp had moved about ten miles down the
Sweetwater. General Custer had notified them that if they
undertook to move farther he would send the army after them,
wisely concluding, however, that it was best to carry on peace
negotiations at this distance and thus avoid the friction of too
close proximity to the army.
Several days of parleying ensued with no result, when on the 21st
day of March, Custer decided to bring things to a crisis by a bold
stroke. The son of one of the chiefs who was being held
captive had come to see his father, and Custer seized this
opportunity to send his ultimatum to Medicine Arrow, which was
that unless the women were delivered safe to him by sundown the
next day he would hang the three chiefs then in his possession.
Early the next morning he began preparations for the hanging, the
three prisoners looking on with sad and dejected faces.
Plainly they feared the women would not be given up. Great
anxiety prevailed throughout the entire camp, for upon the result
of this ultimatum hung the lives of three chiefs and the welfare
of the two white women and the probability of a terrible battle.
About four o’clock on the afternoon of the 22nd of
March, 1869, the look-out at Custer’s camp announced a single
Indian had come into view on top of a hill in the direction of the
Cheyenne camp. He seemed to stop and signal to someone
behind him, and soon about twenty horsemen came into sight riding
toward General Custer’s camp. All eyes were turned on the
band of horsemen. Custer took his field glass and stepped
forward.
“I see two mounted on one horse. Can these be the women we
seek?” said he.
All agreed that it must be so, and their hopes rose high at the
prospect of their immediate release. Young Brewster, who had been
disarmed and kept under guard by Custer’s orders to prevent his
killing Cheyennes on sight and precipitating a fight, was now
brought forward and allowed to stand by the general as the latter
with field glass was viewing the approaching Indians.
“The two have dismounted and coming on foot. One is much taller
than the other,” said Custer.
“That tall one must be my sister. Let me go to meet
her," said Brewster.
“Not yet,” said the general. But he told the officers of
the 19th Kansas to ride forward and meet them and
escort them in. But young Brewster, unable to longer
restrain himself, broke away and reached the captive women about
the same time the mounted officer did. Taking the taller of
the two women in his arms, for she proved to be his sister, he
told her the welcome news that here husband was not dead, but was
in the hospital at Fort Hays where she would soon meet him.
Then the whole 19th Kansas pressed around General
Custer and shook his hand and thanked him for his wisdom and
foresight in restraining them from farther bloodshed on the
Washita and for the heroic self sacrifice he had personally made
to recover the captured relatives of their friends.
The Osage scouts too were thanked by the Kansas boys for the part
they had played in the rescue, and the general himself said that
to them much of the credit for the success of the expedition was
due.
