Great Plains Studies, Center for
Date of this Version
1991
Abstract
During the summer of 1857, Colonel Edwin Vos Sumner and his troops invaded Cheyenne and Arapaho land. By the 1851 Treaty of Fort Laramie the two tribes were recognized as the occupants of western Kansas and eastern Colorado between the Platte and Arkansas rivers. The treaty also tried to prevent intertribal warfare and to protect emigrants and commerce over the platte River road and the Santa Fe Trail. After a conflict in 1856 at the Upper Platte bridge, Cheyenne war parties attacked wagon trains on the Platte River road. Whether the raiders were all Southern Cheyennes or if they were joined by their northern kinsmen is unknown. But Colonel Sumner was despatched with cavalry, dragoons, infantry, and a few pieces of artillery to confront the Cheyenne who were viewed as "an unruly race" (33).
Comments
Published in GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY 11:4 (Fall 1991). Copyright © 1991 Center for Great Plains Studies, University of Nebraska–Lincoln.