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In September 1868, the undermanned United States Army was struggling to address attacks by Cheyenne and Sioux warriors against the Kansas settlements, the stagecoach routes, and the transcontinental railroad. General Sheridan hired fifty frontiersmen and scouts to supplement his limited forces. He placed them under the command of Major George Forsyth and Lieutenant Frederick Beecher. Both men were army officers and Civil War veterans with outstanding records. Their orders were to find the Cheyenne raiders and, if practicable, to attack them.
Their patrol left Fort Wallace, the westernmost post in Kansas, and headed northwest into Colorado. After a week or so of following various trails, they were at the limit of their supplies—for both men and horses. They camped along the narrow Arikaree Fork of the Republican River. In the early morning they were surprised and attacked by a force of Cheyenne and Sioux warriors.
The scouts hurried to a small, sandy island in the shallow river and dug in. Eventually they were surrounded by as many as six hundred warriors, led for a time by the famous Cheyenne, Roman Nose. The fighting lasted four days. Half the scouts were killed or wounded. The Cheyenne lost nine warriors, including Roman Nose. Forsyth asked for volunteers to go for help. Two pairs of men set out at night for Fort Wallace—one hundred miles away. They were on foot and managed to slip through the Cheyenne lines. The rest of the scouts held out on the island for nine days. All their horses had been killed. Their food was gone and the meat from the horses was spoiled by the intense heat of the plains. The wounded were suffering from lack of medical supplies, and all were on the verge of starvation when they were rescued by elements of the Tenth Cavalry—the famous Buffalo Soldiers.
Although the battle of Beecher Island was a small incident in the history of western conflict, the story brings together all of the important elements of the Western frontier—most notably the political and economic factors that led to the clash with the Natives and the cultural imperatives that motivated the Cheyenne, the white settlers, and the regular soldiers, both white and black. More fundamentally, it is a story of human heroism exhibited by warriors on both sides of the dramatic conflict.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
July 6, 2021 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781643137117
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781643137117
- File size: 6090 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Starred review from May 15, 2021
A history of a significant 1868 U.S.-Native clash near the Kansas-Colorado border. A Navy veteran who has written novels and multiple books about Native history, Mort spends the majority of his latest laying out the historical and cultural background against which the Battle of Beecher Island unfolded in September 1868. In the years after the Civil War, the completion of a railroad connecting the states on both coasts was a national priority. At the same time, the railroad--and the settlements along its route--posed a direct threat to the Native way of life across the Plains. For the Cheyenne, the ideal to which young men aspired was the life of a warrior, which was incompatible with daily life in the region, and the extreme individualism of the Cheyenne lifestyle meant that treaties signed by chiefs meant nothing to most of their people. Meanwhile, the prevailing attitude of the White settlers was that the Natives should be displaced so western expansion could continue. On the frontier, the Army, drastically reduced in size since the end of the war, was charged with keeping the peace. That was the situation when, in 1868, a scouting party set out to pursue a Cheyenne war party. Maj. George Forsyth decided to seek a battle despite the misgivings of Lt. Frederick Beecher, for whom the battle is named. The troops ended up surrounded by hundreds of Cheyenne and Sioux on a small island in a narrow creek, holding off attackers with their repeating rifles. Mort bases his detailed, page-turning account largely on recollections by Forsyth and by Cheyenne warrior George Bent, creating a nuanced portrayal of a battle that epitomizes the struggle to settle the Plains. The story will appeal to readers interested in U.S.-Native conflict after the Civil War. A rich addition to the popular military history of the late-18th-century frontier.COPYRIGHT(2021) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
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