“The settlement of the West was a collision of irreconcilable cultures, and all the key actors in the struggle were represented— the army, the Natives, the settlers. The small island they fought over was a microcosm of the often pitiless environment of the Plains. It’s all there, in miniature.”

By Terry Mort

IN THE summer of 1868 the Cheyenne and their Sioux and Arapaho allies were spreading havoc on America’s Central Plains. Their targets were railroad construction crews, isolated stagecoach stations and the farms and ranches that lay along the main east-west travel routes, particularly in Kansas and Colorado.

General Phil Sheridan was responsible for that part of the Trans-Mississippi. But the former commander of the Union’s Army of the Shenandoah didn’t have enough men to protect the territory, and the troops he had were mostly the wrong kind.

Congress, which was desperate to save money after accumulating a massive national debt during the Civil War, had reduced the regular army to its barest bones. To further reduce spending, the legislature favored the infantry over the much more expensive cavalry. Consequently, the western posts were manned primarily by foot soldiers whom the Plains tribes scorned as “walk-a-heeps.” The fact that the Cheyenne were highly mobile and nomadic and that their warriors were arguably the finest light cavalry in the world meant that infantry would never be able to find, let alone trouble, the Cheyenne or any of their allies.

A former cavalryman himself, Sheridan decided to augment his meagre resources by hiring 50 mounted civilian scouts. Two regular army officers – Major George ‘Sandy’ Forsyth and Lieutenant Frederick Beecher – would be in command. Both men were veterans of the Civil War, and both had very good reputations. Beecher had been wounded at Fredericksburg and then again at Gettysburg. Forsyth had soldiered with Sheridan in the Shenandoah Valley campaign and was widely respected for his aggressiveness and courage under fire.

The two officers recruited 50 volunteers, including a doctor, from around the Kansas settlements. Pay was a dollar a day. The scouts would supply their own horses and receive 35 cents a day for forage. Each scout would also be given a Spencer repeating carbine, a .45 pistol and plenty of ammunition.

The group’s first mission would be to find and punish Cheyenne raiders who were known to be operating along the Kansas-Colorado border. The scouts would carry enough supplies for a seven-day patrol. They would not take any wagons; four pack mules would carry extra ammunition and supplies.

The patrol left from Fort Wallace, the westernmost post in Kansas. They headed northwest and crossed into Colorado and for several days scouted the country around the Republican River and its tributaries. They finally found the residue of a recent camp and began following the trail of a very large village. At that point, some of the scouts urged caution, fearing the expedition might wind up getting into a fight they could not handle. But Forsyth had orders to attack any hostile villages he might find, although of course he had the freedom to make his own decisions, as conditions warranted.

Forsyth was working with two commonly held precepts: first, the primary difficulty in fighting the Plains tribes was finding them. Second, when surprised and attacked, a village would generally scatter. Those assumptions, plus Forsyth’s natural aggressiveness, his pleasure in having an independent field command and Sheridan’s orders, all affected his decision to keep following the trail, despite the warnings of his experienced scouts.

By the seventh day supplies were running very low. The scouts had hoped to supplement their food by hunting, but they had seen no game whatsoever. Worse, the supply of grain for the horses was almost gone. The late summer prairie grass was dry and brown; grazing would not sustain the horses for very long. The scouts were over one hundred miles from the nearest army post, Fort Wallace. Just getting back there would be a struggle.

Forsyth was again faced with a decision. They were running out of food, but they were on a hot trail. The Cheyenne were close, just up ahead somewhere. Turning around now would be hard to justify. Forsyth decided to push his luck just a little further.

On the evening of the seventh day they camped along the Arikaree Branch of the Republican River. Like many western rivers at that time of year, the Arikaree was nearly dry – just a few thin rivulets. But the little river valley offered decent grazing.

Cheyenne hunters had spotted the scouts and reported to the main village. Sioux were also camped nearby. All told, there were as many as 400 warriors in the camps.

As the scouts settled in for the night, Forsyth was understandably pensive. His camp was surrounded by low hills – ideal places from which to launch a surprise attack. As he walked the riverbank, he noticed a small, flat island in the middle of the Arikaree. It was covered with willows and alder bushes. It looked like a useful defensive position with 70 yards of open riverbed on both sides and even better views up and downstream — good fields of fire in all directions. Forsyth decided that if they were attacked, they would retreat to the island and dig in.

In the Cheyenne village, word was passed that no one should go near the scouts’ camp; let them remain unaware of their danger. The plan was to surround the camp and attack at first light, while the white men were just rolling out of their blankets and making coffee. But in the highly individualistic warrior culture of the Cheyenne, no one person could order another to do anything. Eight younger members of the village saw their chance to steal horses and, as importantly, to make a name for themselves. They quietly left the settlement and went to the hills above the sleeping scouts. In the first grey light, the Cheyenne youngsters charged down the hills toward the scouts’ encampment. Sentries spotted their approach and opened fire, but without effect. The Cheyenne were only able to run off two of the pack mules and a couple of horses. Forsyth, assuming worse was coming, ordered the expedition redeploy to the island. There, the scouts dug trenches in a circle and picketed their horses on the perimeter.

Soon the surrounding hills were lined with hundreds of Cheyenne and Sioux warriors. Many of the women and children from the village came to watch what was about to unfold. That was highly unusual and told the scouts the Cheyenne expected a speedy and complete victory.

Fortunately for the scouts, Cheyenne individualism extended to tactics. Although a few warriors might band together and follow one well respected member of the band, they rarely attacked in a disciplined, coordinated fashion.

Their first attack came from a few dozen warriors who charged down the hillside and along both sides of the stream bed. The Cheyenne were used to fighting troops who were armed with single shot muskets; they were surprised by the volume of fire from the scouts’ Spencer repeaters. There were casualties on both sides as the gunfire continued. Forsyth was hit in both legs and a bullet grazed his scalp and fractured his skull. From that point on he could hardly raise himself from his trench without help. Lieutenant Beecher was at one end of the island, standing and coolly firing his rifle until he was hit in the side. He crawled toward Forsyth, muttered a few words and died. Three scouts and the doctor were also killed or mortally wounded, as well as a half dozen Cheyenne.

Meanwhile, in the Cheyenne village, the group’s most celebrated warrior, Roman Nose, was struggling with a problem. The evening before he had inadvertently violated a personal taboo by eating food that had been touched by metal.  That had destroyed the mystical power of his war bonnet which, he believed, made him invulnerable to bullets. If he joined the attack, it would mean his death. Nevertheless, his comrades urged him to join the fight. Resigned to his fate, he led the next charge and was killed, just as he feared. It was a great loss to the Cheyenne, but they were not disheartened. And they did not withdraw.

The battle settled into a siege with the Cheyenne and Sioux fighting on foot, firing at the scouts from the bankside bushes. By the end of the first day of action, the warriors had wounded a dozen or more of the white men and killed their horses. The scouts were stranded.

When it was dark, Forsyth called his men to his foxhole and asked for volunteers to go for help. Several raised their hands, but he chose 19-year-old Frank Stilwell and a grizzled old French-Canadian by the name of Pierre Trudeau. The two men slipped out of camp. When there were no shouts or shots, Forsyth could hope they escaped. But the two had more than 100 miles to go — on foot across the featureless Plains.

The Cheyenne seemed to be everywhere, in the hills and the tall grass along the riverbanks, firing whenever a target presented itself. The scouts were pinned down. They had plenty of ammunition and some water, but nothing more.

On the third night Forsyth sent two more volunteers for help.

The scouts’ misery increased as the siege stretched out. The days were brutally hot, the nights cold. The food was gone, the meat they cut from the dead horses was spoiling fast. The carcasses of the horses were rotting, and the air was becoming almost too foul to breathe. The wounded scouts were suffering, but there wasn’t much the others could do for them. The medical supplies had been on one of the stampeded mules; the doctor was dead. One man’s wound developed gangrene that ultimately proved fatal. The five men, including Beecher, who had been killed early in the fight were buried on the island. The days passed and the famished scouts grew steadily weaker. The only game they were able to kill was an emaciated coyote.

On the ninth day the starving and ragged scouts saw some riders on the hills to the south. It was the advance of the relief column. Both pairs of scouts had gotten through. The troops who were arriving first were a company of the 10th Cavalry – the regiment of former slaves whom the Cheyenne called Buffalo Soldiers. They brought an ambulance and food.

Amazingly, the Cheyenne and their allies were gone. Sometime during the siege, they had decided to leave the marooned scouts to their fate. The warriors did things their way and for their own often mystifying reasons. They had lost nine men killed and an unknown number wounded. Their most famous warrior was also dead. But they did not regard the fight as particularly significant. It was just one more incident of constant war.

Newspapers, on the other hand, would claim the fight at Beecher Island was a significant victory. Forsyth, who would take two years to recover from his injuries, knew better.

What did it all mean, if anything? Strategically, the fight was of little importance – just another in a series of skirmishes and battles. But it’s worth remembering for two reasons. First, Beecher Island offers insights into what happened in the West, and why. The settlement of the West was a collision of irreconcilable cultures, and all the key actors in the struggle were represented— the army, the Natives, the settlers. The small island they fought over was a microcosm of the often pitiless environment of the Plains. It’s all there, in miniature.

 Second, Beecher Island is a story of heroism and endurance. The epic journey of the scouts, the endurance of men left behind, the death of Fred Beecher, so promising and well respected a young officer, the death of Roman Nose, a Cheyenne hero who decided to attack, even though he knew he would be killed – it’s the stuff of legend. As eminent historian Jacques Barzun said, we read history because it feeds our “primitive appetite for story.” That’s reason enough to remember Beecher Island.

Terry Mort is the author of Cheyenne Summer — The Battle of Beecher Island: A History. A former naval officer and Vietnam vet, his previous books include The Hemingway Patrols and The Wrath of Cochise. He has also edited works by Mark Twain, Jack London, and Zane Grey. He lives with his wife in Sonoita, Arizona.