Review of Cheyennes at Dark Water Creek: The Last Fight of the Red River War. By William Y. Chalfant

Authors

James Briscoe, Norman, Oklahoma

Date of this Version

1998

Citation

Great Plains Quarterly Vol. 18, No. 4, Fall 1998, pp. 347-348

Comments

Copyright 1998 by the Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska- Lincoln

Abstract

William Chalfant presents a fairly detailed and objective history of the attack on Little Bull's encampment on Sappa Creek in 1875. Father Powell, an honorary Peace Chief of the Cheyenne Tribe and prominent Cheyenne historian, praises Chalfant's efforts in presenting an impartial and objective recounting of the events. More detached readers, however, will find a vein of sympathy in Chalfant's writing for the Cheyenne side of the story.

Chalfant provides a detailed background of the events leading up to and surrounding the Cheyenne involvement in the Buffalo or Red River Wars of 1872-74. This was a period of raiding and mass attacks by the Southern Plains Indians on buffalo hunters (the first action was at the Adobe Walls hunter's camp) and settlements and farms in the old hunting grounds and elsewhere in a last desperate effort to save the bison herds and old way of life on the Plains. With few resources and heavily outgunned, the Southern Plains groups accomplished little and suffered the bulk of the casualties.

By the end of 1874, open hostilities had been brought to a halt by the Army, and a general roundup of hostiles was underway. Little Bull, like other band leaders, saw the roundup as an end to the traditional Cheyenne life on the Southern Plains and attempted to join the Northern Cheyenne bands, some five hundred miles to the north. Little Bull's was one of the smaller groups fleeing northward, numbering about seventy men, women, and children.