In July of 1868, the Cheyenne gathered at Fort Larned, Kansas. The occasion was the receiving of their first annuity issue as directed by the Medicine Lodge Treaty.
Though it was yet summer every Indian looked toward the harsh Plains winter that would come all too soon. Before it arrived with its chilling temperatures, often dropping below freezing, and walls of snow falling from sunless skies, the Cheyenne would hunt. The meat would be dried and stored away against the hunger of a long winter. Because of this seasonal event, the Indians were looking forward to receiving the promised guns and ammunition that would make their meat gathering so much more easy and abundant than their ancestors could have imagined. But trouble was in the wind.
During the previous month some Cheyennes had raided a Kaw Indian settlement. Because of this depredation, Superintendent of Indian Affairs Thomas Murphy decided not to give these Indians the arms. After some deliberation, Murphy did relent, but it was too late. Enraged at the breach in the treaty that had been signed, a group of young Cheyenne men had already left to raid against the Pawnees.
On their way to the Pawnees the Cheyenne, with some Arapahos and Sioux, they also attacked white settlements along the Saline, Solomon, and Republican Rivers of Kansas. In a two-day period they looted and burned cabins and ran off considerable stock. But their aggression did not end there. Five white women were ravished and fifteen men were killed.
When hearing the news of these attacks, Superintendent Murphy stated the general situation in simple terms when he said, "War is surely upon us." Murphy, in this instance, was correct. He might have well added that the worst was yet to come.
General William Tecumseh Sherman, commander of all the troops on the Great Plains, wasted no time in setting up his defensive. A major factor in his plans to subdue the Cheyenne, as well as some rebel Arapaho and Sioux was a man who has been termed a "scrappy little Irishman," General Philip H. Sheridan, the new commander in Kansas. As Cheyenne raiders continued to run wild across Kansas, Sheridan began to organize a winter campaign. Perhaps he should have stepped up his pace and aimed for an autumn campaign.
One of Sheridan's first orders was to have Lieutenant Frederick Beecher at Fort Wallace hire some scouts to keep an eye on the Indians and to serve as mediators between the Indians and the whites. Immediately, Cephas W. "Dick" Parr, Frank Espey, and Will Comstock, who had just beaten a murder charge, were hired.
