Cheyenne Summer: The Battle of Beecher Island -- A History

Cheyenne Summer: The Battle of Beecher Island -- A History by Terry Mort

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 the limited forces at his disposal. He placed them under the command of Major George Forsyth and Lieutenant Frederick Beecher. Their orders were to find the Cheyenne raiders and attack them.

The scouts left Fort Wallace, the westernmost post in Kansas, and headed northwest into Colorado. After a week of fruitless searching and with their supplies almost exhausted, they camped along the narrow Arikaree Fork of the Republican River. In the early morning, they were attacked by a force of Cheyenne and Sioux warriors. The scouts retreated to a small, sandy island in the shallow river and dug in. Eventually, they were surrounded by as many as six hundred warriors, led by the famous Cheyenne, Roman Nose.

While the results of the ensuing battle were not strategically significant to either side in the greater Indian Wars, the fight was culturally and historically important to both the Cheyenne and the United States Army -- as well as to the civilian society. On the tiny battlefield of Beecher Island, the combatants represented the enormous historical and economic forces that were driving the settlement of the West.

Cheyenne Summer brings together all of the vital elements of the Western frontier, most notably the political factors that led to the clash with the Natives and the cultural imperatives that motivated the Cheyenne, the white settlers, and the U.S. Army soldiers -- both white and Black. Thus the Battle of Beecher Island becomes a vital lens through which to view one of the most transformative periods of American history.

Pegasus Books, Hardcover, 1st Edition, 1st Printing, 2021