Cheyennes and Horse Soldiers: The 1857 Expedition and the Battle of Solomon's Fork

by William Y. Chalfant, Robert M. Utley (Foreword by), Roy Grinnell (Illustrator)

Overview

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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780806135007
Publisher:	University of Oklahoma Press
Publication date:	10/07/2002
Edition description:	Revised ed.
Pages:	440
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.50(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

William Y. Chalfant, a practicing attorney and a director of the Kansas Historical Society, is an avid student of western American history.

Robert M. Utley served in the National Park Service for 25 years in various capacities, including Chief Historian from 1964 to 1972. Since his retirement from the federal government in 1980, he has devoted himself full-time to historical research and writing with a specialty in the American West. He is author, among many articles and books he has published, of Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer and the Western Military Frontier, Revised Edition; Billy the Kid: A Short and Violent Life; Lone Star Lawmen: The Second Century of the Texas Rangers; and The Commanders: Civil War Generals Who Shaped the American West. A founder of the Western History Association, Utley has served on its governing council and as its president.
 

Roy Grinnell of Santa Fe, a member of the Cowboy Artists of American, is a noted western artist.