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Battle of the Washita River

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Battle of Washita River
Part of the Indian Wars
File:X-33802.jpg
Battle of Washita from Harper's Weekly, Dec. 19, 1868
DateNovember 27, 1868
LocationRoger Mills County, Oklahoma
Result U.S. victory
Belligerents
 United States Southern Cheyenne
Commanders and leaders
George A. Custer Black Kettle†
Strength
~800 soldiers 51 families
Casualties and losses
21 killed,
13 wounded		 Up to 50 killed(*);
Up to 50 wounded;
53 women and children captured

(*) Official U.S. Army account

  • 11 men and boys and 19 women and children according to the Cheyenne
  • 103 men and boys according to Custer
Comanche campaign

The Battle of Washita River (or Battle of the Washita, also called Washita massacre) occurred on November 27, 1868 when Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer's 7th U.S. Cavalry attacked Black Kettle's Cheyenne village on the Washita River (near present day Cheyenne, Oklahoma).

The attack was an important event in the tragic clash of cultures of the Indian Wars era.

Background

Main article: Comanche Campaign

The Native tribes were restive, as the Kansas Pacific Railway was being built through their country, frightening the buffalo - their source of food, clothing, and shelter — and attracting white settlement. The Cheyennes were still smoldering over the massacre of 200 of Black Kettle's peaceful band, including women and children, by Col. John M. Chivington and his Colorado volunteers in the 1864 Sand Creek massacre and hostilities had continued when Maj. Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock penetrated their territory with a large expedition in 1867, resulting in the Battle of Beecher Island.

By the late 1860s the government's policy of removing Indians from desirable areas, graphically represented by the earlier transfer of the Five Civilized Tribes from the Southeast to Oklahoma, commonly known by the Cherokee term, the Trail of Tears, had run its course and was succeeded by one of concentrating them on Indian reservations. The practice of locating tribes in other than native or salubrious surroundings and of joining uncongenial bands led to many subsequent inter-Indian conflicts. Some bands found it convenient to accept reservation status and government supplies during the winter months, returning to the warpath and hunting trail in the milder seasons. Many bands of many tribes refused to accept the treaties offered by a peace commission and resisted the government’s attempt to confine them to specific geographical limits; it fell to the Army to force compliance. In his area, General Philip Sheridan now planned to hit the Indians in their permanent winter camps.

While a winter campaign presented serious logistical problems, it offered opportunities for decisive results. If the Indians’ shelter, food, and livestock could be destroyed or captured, not only the warriors but their women and children were at the mercy of the Army and the elements, and there was little left but surrender. These tactics, amounting to the total destruction of the Indian culture, raised certain moral questions for many officers and men that were never satisfactorily resolved. Sheridan devised a plan whereby three columns would converge on the Indian wintering grounds just east of the Texas Panhandle: one from Fort Lyon in Colorado, one from Fort Bascom in New Mexico, and one from Fort Supply in the Indian Territory later to be called Oklahoma. The 7th Cavalry under Lt. Col. George A. Custer found the Indians on the Washita River.

The battle

On November 27, 1868 Custer’s Osage scouts located the trail of an Indian war party. Custer followed this trail without break until nightfall. Upon nightfall there was a short period of rest until there was sufficient moonlight to continue. Eventually they reached Black Kettle’s village.

Black Kettle had just returned from the nearby Fort Cobb a few days before, where he went with the petition for General William B. Hazen for peace and protection. He had resisted the entreaties of some of his people, including his wife, to move their camp downriver closer to larger encampments of Cheyennes, Kiowas, and Apaches wintered there. He refused to believe that Sheridan would order an attack without first offering an opportunity for peace.

Map of the battle

Custer divided his force into four parts, each moving into position so that at first daylight they could all simultaneously converge on the village. At daybreak the four columns attacked. The village was awoken by Double Wolf warning of the impending attack. The Indian warriors quickly left their lodges to take cover behind trees and in deep ravines. Custer was able to take control of the village quickly, but it took longer to quell all remaining resistance.

Chief Magpie, a teenager at the time living in Black Kettle's village, shot a soldier and took his horse, then rode off to safety. He would fight Custer again at the famous Battle of Little Bighorn in 1876. Chief Black Kettle was shot and killed along with his wife when they attempted to escape across the river. According to Magpie, Cheyenne women pulled both Black Kettle and his wife's body from the water and carried them up the pony trail that was north of the river to a sandy knoll. There they debated where to bury them. To this day, no one actually knows where the chief is buried.

During the fighting, Major Joel Elliot, Custer's second in command at Washita, was leading companies G, H, and M to the attack. After the initial charge in to the camp, Elliot spotted a number of Cheyenne fleeing downstream. He led a small detachment of troops after them and was killed with 17 enlisted men about two miles east of Black Kettle's village, where they were overrun by Cheyenne, Arapaho, and Kiowa warriors coming to Black Kettle's aid.

Custer wrote that Indian losses were probably about 100 killed. According to the modern official account by the U.S. Army Center of Military History, the 7th Cavalry lost 21 officers and men killed and 13 wounded in the Battle of the Washita; the Indians lost perhaps 50 killed and as many wounded. Between 19 and 25 civilians had been killed according to Washita prisoners and Kiowa witnesses. Osage scouts (who did not took part in the fighting) left Washita with Black Kettle's scalp. The engagement at the Washita might have ended very differently if the larger encampments to the east had been closer to Black Kettle's camp.

Following the capture of Black Kettle's village, Custer soon found himself in a precarious position. As the fighting subsided Custer began to notice large groups of mounted Indians gathering on nearby hilltops. He quickly learned that Black Kettle's village was only one of a chain of Indian villages encamped along the river. Fearing an attack he ordered some of his men to take defensive positions while the others were to gather the Indian belongings and horses. What the Americans did not want or could not carry, they destroyed including the village's pony herd.

Custer feared the outlying Indians would find and attack his supply train so near nightfall he feigned an attack on the downriver Indian encampments. Seeing that Custer was approaching their villages, the surrounding Indians retreated to protect their families from a fate similar to that of Black Kettle's village. Custer promptly turned his forces around and moved back towards his supply train, which he eventually reached. Custer quickly retreated to Camp Supply with his prisoners and the Battle of Washita was concluded.

Controversies

The controversial surprise attack was hailed at the time by the military and many civilians as a significant victory aimed at reducing Indian raids on frontier settlements. Washita remains controversial because many Indians and whites labeled Custer's attack a massacre.

Custer certainly did not consider Washita a massacre. He does mention that some women took weapons and were subsequently killed. He did leave Washita with women and children prisoners; he did not simply kill every Indian in the village, though he admittedly couldn't avoid killing few women in the middle of the hard fight.

As for the deaths of the women and children, Jerome Greene, in his a book about the encounter in 2004 for the National Park Service, concluded: "Soldiers evidently took measures to protect the women and children." According to Paul Hutton, "Although the fight on the Washita was most assuredly one-sided, it was not a massacre. Black Kettle's Cheyennes were not unarmed innocents living under the impression that they were not at war. Several of Black Kettle's warriors had recently fought the soldiers, and the chief had been informed by Hazen that there could be no peace until he surrendered to Sheridan. The soldiers were not under orders to kill everyone, for Custer personally stopped the slaying of noncombatants, and fifty-three prisoners were taken by the troops."

The last common point of interest was the loss of the cavalry's great coats. Custer had his men set their coats aside prior to the battle, which allowed the Indians to capture them. Custer admits to this in his account. He had ordered the men to take off their coats so they would have greater maneuverability. Not mentioned in the modern accounts was that Custer's men also had left their rations behind. Custer left a small guard with the coats and rations but the Indian attackers were too numerous and the guard fled.

Aftermath

The battle was an example of hitting the Indians in the winter months when the destruction of their villages and stored food killed or weakened more than did the initial military attack. As it happened, the impact of losing winter supplies, plus the knowledge that cold weather no longer provided protection from attack, convinced many bands to accept reservation life.

Fifty-three Native women and children were held as captives until the late spring of 1869. They were used as a bargaining chip to gain the release of white women held by other bands of Cheyenne.

Black Kettle is still honored as a prominent leader who never ceased striving for peace even though it cost him his life.

Depiction in fiction

In the television series Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, this battle is portrayed as a massacre in the double-episode titled Washita, aired on April 29, 1995.

In the film The Last Samurai, Tom Cruise's character Captain Nathan Algren had nightmares from his participation at the battle.

In the film Little Big Man the battle has a significant role. It is depicted as a massacre.

Notes

  1. http://www.americaslibrary.gov/cgi-bin/page.cgi/es/ok/washita_1
  2. Greene, Jerome Washita, p. 189.
  3. The Custer Reader, Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, p. 102

References

External links

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