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Cheyennes and Horse Soldiers: The 1857 Expedition and the Battle of Solomon’s Fork
The first major battle between the U.S. Army and the Cheyenne Indians took place on the south fork of the Solomon River in present-day northwest Kansas. In this stirring account, William Y. Chalfant recreates the human dimensions of what was probably the only large-unit sabre charge against the Plains tribes, in a battle that was as much a clash of cultures as of cavalry and Cheyenne warriors.
In May 1857 the U. S. First Cavalry, under Col. E. V. Summer, had marched out of Fort Leavenworth to find and “severely punish” the Cheyennes for their attacks on immigrants and other travelers during the previous year–attacks precipitated largely by the army’s earlier assaults on the Cheyennes. Two columns of soldiers moved westward, penetrating the territory of the southern bands of Cheyennes between the Santa Fe and Oregon-California trails, where few whites had been before.
When the cavalry columns were reunited, early in July, the combined forces left their supply train behind and marched southeast across the plains. They were braving the extreme heat of summer with limited rations and little water when they finally met their quarry on the south fork of the Solomon. Resplendent in war finery, the Cheyennes had formed a grand line of battle such as was never again seen in the Plains Indian wars.
William Chalfant recaptures the drama of the confrontation in his narrative: “As one the troopers reached down, and then 300 sabres arced above them, the bright afternoon sunshine flashing across the burnished steel as if the air were torn by a shower of flame. For an instant the blades were held aloft, then came down to the tierce point. At the same time the troopers gave out a mighty yell. And so they thundered across the valley of the Solomon, directly at the oncoming Cheyennes.”
In terms of history, the First Cavalry’s campaign against the Cheyennes was a microcosm of relations between white civilization and Plains Indian. This exciting narrative penetrates the Indian and white cultures to show the battle marked the end of one era in Indian-white relations and the beginning of another.
In May 1857 the U. S. First Cavalry, under Col. E. V. Summer, had marched out of Fort Leavenworth to find and “severely punish” the Cheyennes for their attacks on immigrants and other travelers during the previous year–attacks precipitated largely by the army’s earlier assaults on the Cheyennes. Two columns of soldiers moved westward, penetrating the territory of the southern bands of Cheyennes between the Santa Fe and Oregon-California trails, where few whites had been before.
When the cavalry columns were reunited, early in July, the combined forces left their supply train behind and marched southeast across the plains. They were braving the extreme heat of summer with limited rations and little water when they finally met their quarry on the south fork of the Solomon. Resplendent in war finery, the Cheyennes had formed a grand line of battle such as was never again seen in the Plains Indian wars.
William Chalfant recaptures the drama of the confrontation in his narrative: “As one the troopers reached down, and then 300 sabres arced above them, the bright afternoon sunshine flashing across the burnished steel as if the air were torn by a shower of flame. For an instant the blades were held aloft, then came down to the tierce point. At the same time the troopers gave out a mighty yell. And so they thundered across the valley of the Solomon, directly at the oncoming Cheyennes.”
In terms of history, the First Cavalry’s campaign against the Cheyennes was a microcosm of relations between white civilization and Plains Indian. This exciting narrative penetrates the Indian and white cultures to show the battle marked the end of one era in Indian-white relations and the beginning of another.
- GenresNonfiction
440 pages, Paperback
First published August 1, 1989
1 person is currently reading
29 people want to read
About the author
William Y. Chalfant
7 books3 followersWilliam "Bill" Chalfant was an attorney who wrote several books on the history of relations between whites and Native Americans on the Southern Plains.
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
April 27, 2016
My hobby for the last seven years or so has been working on a novel of the American west. I have passed 1,500 pages and estimate that I am perhaps a quarter of the way done. (Don’t worry – I’m not about to try to sell you this book. Based on what I’ve put into it, I would have to charge $537 a copy to break even. And that’s in Microsoft Word format). This book-in-progress (I use the term “book” lightly) spans the years from 1854 (beginning with the Grattan Massacre outside Fort Laramie) to 1890 (ending the massacre at Wounded Knee). I am trying to encompass all the great events of America’s westward expansion: the Indian Wars, the Civil War, and more Indian Wars).
This obviously requires some work on my behalf.
I’ve purchased over a hundred books. I’ve read thousands of pages. I’ve pored over governmental records, congressional testimony, contemporary memoirs and journals, and have made good use of the copyright-ended books available for free on the internet. Over the years, I’ve also dragged my wife – and now my daughter – to dozens of battlefields, from the supremely well-maintained (the Little Big Horn) to the shamefully dissolved (Fort Ridgely, which now sits amidst a golf course). At the Little Big Horn, I lay in the grass to know what it would’ve felt like to be a Lakota warrior creeping towards Custer’s hill. At the site of the Fetterman Fight, I ran from the end of the trail (near the ambush of Lieutenant Grummond’s cavalry) to the top of the trail, where Fetterman died, so I’d know what a scared young soldier would feel like upon making his retreat.
The pursuit of this project has been endlessly fun for me. It’s not so much something I want to finish, as something I like to continually tinker with.
It was in the course of my research and writing that I first heard of the Battle of Solomon’s Fork, which took place in Kansas in 1857. It was not a large battle, nor particularly bloody (just a handful of men died on either side, making it the equivalent of a fierce minute at Gettysburg). Certainly, it has not found itself in the annals of the Indian Wars. Mostly, if you stumble over this skirmish at all, it’s as a footnote in Crazy Horse’s life.
When I decided to put Solomon’s Fork into my novel, I embarked upon a study. At first, I was stymied. Accounts were vague, with the exception of some letters written by a pre-traitorous Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart, then an officer in the First Cavalry.
It was only when I found William Y. Chalfant’s Cheyennes and Horse Soldiers that I got the answer to every question I had about Solomon’s Fork, plus the answers to dozens of questions I never considered.
Cheyennes and Horse Soldiers is a thoroughgoing account of Colonel Edwin “Bull” Sumner’s 1857 expedition against the Cheyenne Indians.
By July 1857, tensions between whites and the Cheyenne were extraordinarily high. The Oregon Trail and Santa Fe Trail cut across Cheyenne lands. The settlers, their wagons, and their livestock disrupted the pattern of the buffalo and created friction as two different cultures rubbed against each other. This friction eventually sparked. Soldiers killed several warriors in a dispute over allegedly-stolen horses. The Cheyenne retaliated by murdering isolated travelers along the road.
Colonel Sumner, in command of the recently-formed First U.S. Cavalry, led a two pronged expedition from Fort Leavenworth west across Kansas. At Solomon’s Fork, he met a force of Cheyenne warriors (and young Crazy Horse, visiting from the Oglala Lakota), who had been convinced by a medicine man named Ice that bullets could not hurt them. To the chagrin of the Cheyenne, Sumner ordered a saber charge. The resulting clash – with primitive weapons – resulted in much spectacle and little bloodshed and the even passed into history.
Chalfant, an attorney who has written several books about obscure Indian battles, treats the battle like it’s the central event in human history. He has exhaustively researched the events leading up to the 1857 Expedition. Once the campaign is under way, he meticulously recounts each day of Sumner’s march, including mileage and topography. Also included in this generous account are a number of maps; over 20 pen-and-ink drawings (by Roy Grinnell); and appendices that include the expedition’s official reports, and a schedule of each day’s march.
It is an abundance of riches, if you count information about half-lost 19th century clashes to be a treasure.
To his credit, Chalfant is a good writer who manages to avoid getting bogged down in all the facts he has collected. He does a fine job presenting his story, and in moving extraneous details to the appendices. Still, I would have liked it a bit more if he had focused on the people – their personalities, backgrounds, etc. – than the terrain covered on each day’s march. There are also a couple errors in the text (the misspelling of George Steuart’s last name; giving the incorrect middle name for Joe Johnson), but this is more a function of being published by a small house. (And really, there isn’t a major publisher that would ever think if marketing a book like this).
This isn’t a book for everyone, which is fine, since you’re never going to just stumble across it. This is the kind of book you have to seek out. If you did seek it out, you’re going to be pleased. This is the best, most complete, perhaps only full-scaled account of a forgotten scrape, featuring a cast of fighters that would only later make their names fully known.
Solomon’s Fork is not the Little Big Horn or the Washita or Sand Creek. It’s not even on the scale of Harney’s campaign against the Lakota that ended at Bluewater Creek. The campaign was a wisp of smoke. Just one more punitive strike against the Indians that marked so much of the 1800s. If it is worth remembering, it is because the Indian Wars are a vital, formative period in our history; a uniquely American struggle that took place in our backyards, on American soil, next to American rivers, between Americans already here, and Americans just arrived.
This obviously requires some work on my behalf.
I’ve purchased over a hundred books. I’ve read thousands of pages. I’ve pored over governmental records, congressional testimony, contemporary memoirs and journals, and have made good use of the copyright-ended books available for free on the internet. Over the years, I’ve also dragged my wife – and now my daughter – to dozens of battlefields, from the supremely well-maintained (the Little Big Horn) to the shamefully dissolved (Fort Ridgely, which now sits amidst a golf course). At the Little Big Horn, I lay in the grass to know what it would’ve felt like to be a Lakota warrior creeping towards Custer’s hill. At the site of the Fetterman Fight, I ran from the end of the trail (near the ambush of Lieutenant Grummond’s cavalry) to the top of the trail, where Fetterman died, so I’d know what a scared young soldier would feel like upon making his retreat.
The pursuit of this project has been endlessly fun for me. It’s not so much something I want to finish, as something I like to continually tinker with.
It was in the course of my research and writing that I first heard of the Battle of Solomon’s Fork, which took place in Kansas in 1857. It was not a large battle, nor particularly bloody (just a handful of men died on either side, making it the equivalent of a fierce minute at Gettysburg). Certainly, it has not found itself in the annals of the Indian Wars. Mostly, if you stumble over this skirmish at all, it’s as a footnote in Crazy Horse’s life.
When I decided to put Solomon’s Fork into my novel, I embarked upon a study. At first, I was stymied. Accounts were vague, with the exception of some letters written by a pre-traitorous Lieutenant J.E.B. Stuart, then an officer in the First Cavalry.
It was only when I found William Y. Chalfant’s Cheyennes and Horse Soldiers that I got the answer to every question I had about Solomon’s Fork, plus the answers to dozens of questions I never considered.
Cheyennes and Horse Soldiers is a thoroughgoing account of Colonel Edwin “Bull” Sumner’s 1857 expedition against the Cheyenne Indians.
By July 1857, tensions between whites and the Cheyenne were extraordinarily high. The Oregon Trail and Santa Fe Trail cut across Cheyenne lands. The settlers, their wagons, and their livestock disrupted the pattern of the buffalo and created friction as two different cultures rubbed against each other. This friction eventually sparked. Soldiers killed several warriors in a dispute over allegedly-stolen horses. The Cheyenne retaliated by murdering isolated travelers along the road.
Colonel Sumner, in command of the recently-formed First U.S. Cavalry, led a two pronged expedition from Fort Leavenworth west across Kansas. At Solomon’s Fork, he met a force of Cheyenne warriors (and young Crazy Horse, visiting from the Oglala Lakota), who had been convinced by a medicine man named Ice that bullets could not hurt them. To the chagrin of the Cheyenne, Sumner ordered a saber charge. The resulting clash – with primitive weapons – resulted in much spectacle and little bloodshed and the even passed into history.
Chalfant, an attorney who has written several books about obscure Indian battles, treats the battle like it’s the central event in human history. He has exhaustively researched the events leading up to the 1857 Expedition. Once the campaign is under way, he meticulously recounts each day of Sumner’s march, including mileage and topography. Also included in this generous account are a number of maps; over 20 pen-and-ink drawings (by Roy Grinnell); and appendices that include the expedition’s official reports, and a schedule of each day’s march.
It is an abundance of riches, if you count information about half-lost 19th century clashes to be a treasure.
To his credit, Chalfant is a good writer who manages to avoid getting bogged down in all the facts he has collected. He does a fine job presenting his story, and in moving extraneous details to the appendices. Still, I would have liked it a bit more if he had focused on the people – their personalities, backgrounds, etc. – than the terrain covered on each day’s march. There are also a couple errors in the text (the misspelling of George Steuart’s last name; giving the incorrect middle name for Joe Johnson), but this is more a function of being published by a small house. (And really, there isn’t a major publisher that would ever think if marketing a book like this).
This isn’t a book for everyone, which is fine, since you’re never going to just stumble across it. This is the kind of book you have to seek out. If you did seek it out, you’re going to be pleased. This is the best, most complete, perhaps only full-scaled account of a forgotten scrape, featuring a cast of fighters that would only later make their names fully known.
Solomon’s Fork is not the Little Big Horn or the Washita or Sand Creek. It’s not even on the scale of Harney’s campaign against the Lakota that ended at Bluewater Creek. The campaign was a wisp of smoke. Just one more punitive strike against the Indians that marked so much of the 1800s. If it is worth remembering, it is because the Indian Wars are a vital, formative period in our history; a uniquely American struggle that took place in our backyards, on American soil, next to American rivers, between Americans already here, and Americans just arrived.
November 12, 2024
This is an outstanding history of COL Sumner's 1857 campaign against the Cheyenne Indians in western Kansas. It's a good mix of context and history prior to the campaign, the march leading up to the Battle of Soloman's Fork, the battle itself, the pursuit that followed, and the march to end the Campaign.
The book is more of a traditional history than a narrative history, but it appears to be the absolute best source for this campaign and battle.
As an active duty Soldier in the 4th Cavalry Regiment, I wish more was known about the exact location of the battle as I'd love to visit the same ground as a Staff Ride. It's near Penokee, Kansas, but the exact location appears to be unknown.
The book is more of a traditional history than a narrative history, but it appears to be the absolute best source for this campaign and battle.
As an active duty Soldier in the 4th Cavalry Regiment, I wish more was known about the exact location of the battle as I'd love to visit the same ground as a Staff Ride. It's near Penokee, Kansas, but the exact location appears to be unknown.
August 7, 2021
This thoroughly-researched, well-written book chronicles the forces that set in motion a brief, obscure, and quite significant battle in western Kansas. The battle itself was notable because it featured a good old-fashioned cavalry charge. It's a great read!
January 15, 2015
Well - as with so many novels of this type it's not quite what you'd call an adventure novel.
However, as a novel where the purpose is to give you an insight into an 1857 US Army expedition against the Cheyenne, and the subsequent battle, it performs the job admirably.
The detail is spot on. For me it was like watching a film.
It also makes you appreciate what every day hardships the average cavalry soldier was called upon to endure while out in the field.
I'd recommend this to anyone who likes to read a factual historic narrative - rather than a 'whodunnit' type of story.
Yes......I'd definately read it again.
However, as a novel where the purpose is to give you an insight into an 1857 US Army expedition against the Cheyenne, and the subsequent battle, it performs the job admirably.
The detail is spot on. For me it was like watching a film.
It also makes you appreciate what every day hardships the average cavalry soldier was called upon to endure while out in the field.
I'd recommend this to anyone who likes to read a factual historic narrative - rather than a 'whodunnit' type of story.
Yes......I'd definately read it again.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews