Book Description

Excerpt from Last of Army's Rank and File Whose Blood Drenched Kansas Soil The writer knew both men intimately 'and this accounts for his effort to give them a placein history. It was in April, 1875, the commanding officer of Fort Lyon, Col., was instructed to dispatch, without delay, a detachment of forty cavalry, under Lieut. Austin Henely, Sixth Cavalry, to Fort Wallace, Kansas. There the troops were to take the field and intercept, if possible, a band of Cheyennes which had escaped from the Fort Reno Agency, and were making their way across Kansas to the Platte River, to join the Northern Cheyennes. The detachment was on the trail within twenty-four hours and on April 23 over took the band in the Sappa Valley, in what is now Clinton township, Rawlins County. They were taken completely by surprise, in the dawn of the day, and so fierce was the attack, so determined were the sol diers to square accounts that when stock was taken after the finish, the dead among the hostiles num bered more than forty, of which eight were squaws and children. The loss on the side of the soldiers was Papier and Theims, both killed instantly. None were wounded. The camp was totally destroyed and the plunder secured required several wagons to carry, not counting a herd of nearly four hundred ponies which the troops rounded up. With these men it was a case of Remember the Maine sentiment for their Shibboleth, by making it Remember the Germaine Family, of which four members were massacred in 1874 by this band, four girl members taken into cap tivity, and rescued the following winter during the Miles campaign of 1874-5 in which these troopers participated. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.