The thunder of hooves rolled across the northeastern Colorado prairie just after dawn in 1852, but the riders were not charging into battle. Two Cheyenne war chiefs, Black Kettle and Long Chin, were moving their warriors into position to strike a Pawnee village, their hated enemy. Black Kettle carried a bundle of sacred arrows blessed by a Cheyenne medicine man, tied to the end of his long lance. Long Chin wore the sacred medicine hat.
In Cheyenne tradition, no attack could begin until the men bearing these holy items took to the field first. If the medicine was broken, the warriors believed their attack would fail and they could all be killed. The war between the Cheyenne and the Pawnee had burned hot for a decade. In 1842, the Pawnee had captured the sacred arrow bundle, a loss the Cheyenne considered an almost irreparable tragedy.
Though their Lakota allies eventually recaptured one arrow, the Cheyenne spent much of the 1840s in a state of spiritual and social disarray, plagued by misfortune. They used the single recaptured arrow to create a new bundle and trekked deep into the Black Hills to place two arrows in a crevice as an offering, hoping to rekindle their medicine. For a time, it seemed to no avail. In 1849, as tens of thousands of gold rush migrants streamed toward California, cholera swept through the Plains tribes.
The Cheyenne and their Lakota allies lived closest to the main travel routes and suffered worst. Travelers reported entire Cheyenne villages deserted, most inhabitants dead of the plague, the survivors fled to the hills. Thousands perished, leaving orphans and widows across the plains. Black Kettle and his family survived.
His leadership, selflessness, and prudence drove his rise to prominence. In 1850, he moved his people to the Arkansas River and called on all surviving Cheyenne bands to join him and rebuild. In 1851, he took part in the signing of the Treaty of Fort Laramie, solidifying a truce between the Cheyenne, their Arapaho allies, and the United States government. In return for a lease on the Cheyenne buffalo hunting grounds, the government ceded control of lands from the Rocky Mountains to the plains roughly 300 miles east.
Bolstered by official recognition, Black Kettle arranged an alliance with the Arapaho, Lakota, Kiowa, and Apache, and in the summer of 1852 they took to the warpath against the Pawnee, wreaking havoc while trying to drive them from the territory for good. But the Pawnee had not yet been driven out, and the warriors now gathered around Black Kettle still burned for vengeance. On this morning, several Cheyenne warriors were missing, among them a war chief named Big Head. With time of the essence, Black Kettle and Long Chin led their forces over the hills toward the Pawnee village their scouts had discovered days earlier.
Black Kettle checked the sinew tether binding the medicine arrows to his lance and breathed a sigh of relief. But with every mile, the absence of the missing warriors weighed on him. Had they abandoned their kinsmen? Refused the call to battle?
Or, worst of all, launched a preemptive attack that would destroy the power of the medicine? When they crested the hill overlooking the village, they were shocked. Lodges, fire pits, and drying buffalo hides covered the site, but no Pawnee were to be seen. Then, within minutes, Big Head and his warriors appeared, riding toward them.
Big Head held a freshly taken scalp, still dripping wet with gore. The preemptive attack had already happened. The medicine was broken. It was too late to call off the attack.
These warriors had traveled far for trophies and glory, and retreat would be seen not as prudence but cowardice. So Black Kettle, Long Chin, and their warriors followed Big Head toward the site where the Pawnee had retreated. Big Head was certain victory was assured. He was quickly proven wrong.
During the Cheyenne’s brief absence, the Pawnee had dug firing pits and entrenched their position. What was meant to be a surprise dawn attack had become a frontal assault on a fortified enemy under the hot afternoon sun. For hours, the Cheyenne launched charge after charge, only to be beaten back by Pawnee bullets and arrows. Some Cheyenne warriors retreated to the abandoned village and set the lodges on fire, denying the Pawnee shelter and food.
As they worked, they spotted a large group of riders approaching. Within a hundred yards, they recognized Potawatomi warriors, allies of the Pawnee. The Potawatomi shot down several of the Cheyenne, followed their trail, flanked the Cheyenne position, and drove them from the field, killing more. As the Cheyenne retreated, Black Kettle and Long Chin simmered with anger at Big Head.
His vain pursuit of glory, they believed, had cost them victory and cost warriors their lives. The camp, only hours before full of excitement, now rang with the wailing of newly widowed women. Many among the Cheyenne felt their attempts to rekindle their sacred medicine had failed them yet again. The future of their people had been cast into uncertainty once more.
But this was not the end, neither for the Cheyenne nor for Chief Black Kettle. Through the 1850s, conflict with the Pawnee continued, and the United States government progressively honored its Fort Laramie Treaty less and less. American expansion into Cheyenne territory continued, reaching a peak in 1859 with Colorado’s Pikes Peak Gold Rush. Many Cheyenne warrior societies answered with brutal raids on encroaching settlers.
Black Kettle, an ardent pragmatist, argued for an end to violence and further cooperation with government officials. His acquiescence ultimately proved pivotal in what history regards as his people’s greatest tragedy. At the Sand Creek Massacre in 1864, federal troops under Colonel John Chivington brutally attacked Black Kettle’s village, killing the chief and dozens of Cheyenne men, women, and children. By many accounts, Black Kettle flew an American flag given to him during an official visit to Washington, D.
C. , outside his tipi, hoping it would signal his village’s allegiance to the United States. It was to no avail. Chivington’s men carried out one of the most ruthless actions in American military history.
Black Kettle, remembered as one of the most influential chiefs in the history of his people, met his end there. The stories of his exploits and his efforts to sustain the life of his people are too numerous to cover in one sitting.