The following text was automatically extracted from the image on this page using optical character recognition software:
BLACK KETTLE'S VILLAGE
Shortly thereafter, Cheyenne Peace Chief Black Kettle took his
followers into camp in a grove of cottonwood along the Washita
River. Black Kettle's village consisted of some fifty-one lodges and
was located upstream from numerous other villages of Apaches,
Arapahos, Cheyennes, Comanches, and Kiowas.9 On November 20
Black Kettle sought and was refused safe haven at Fort Cobb by
Maj. Gen. William B. Hazen. Hazen had been ordered to provide ref-
uge for peaceful tribes but he considered the Cheyennes at war with
the United States and instructed Black Kettle to conclude a peace
agreement with Sheridan. On the evening of November 26, after re-
turning from Fort Cobb, Black Kettle met with the leaders within
his village to report on his meeting with Hazen. They decided to
move their village the next day to be closer to the larger villages
downstream.0
On November 22 between 600 and 800 soldiers of the Seventh
Cavalry and a supply train departed Camp Supply under the com-
mand of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer. Armed with Spencer
carbines and Remington or Colt revolvers, they headed south in
search of villages. The weather was cold, and the plains were cov-
ered with snow."
Early on the morning of November 27 Custer's scouts discovered
Black Kettle's village. Custer took position for a surprise attack at
dawn. The dawn attack involved Custer's command approaching
the village from the northwest, Maj. Joel H. Elliott's command from
the northeast, Capt. Edward Myers from the west, and Capt. Wil-
liam Thompson from the south.12 Approximately 630 soldiers were
involved in the actual attack."
The troops achieved the surprise and quickly captured the vil-
lage. Fighting continued all day, however, as Custer sought to cap-
ture Cheyennes who had escaped the village and to inventory and
destroy the possessions found there. As itemized in Custer's report,
the material included 241 saddles, 573 buffalo robes, 360 untanned
robes, numerous hatchets, 35 revolvers, 47 rifles, 250 pounds of
lead, 4,000 arrows and arrow heads, 75 spears, 90 bullet molds, 35
bows and quivers, 12 shields, 300 pounds of tobacco, winter provi-
sions of dried meat and flour, and substantial clothing, 51 lodges,
and between 800 and 900 horses.'4
As the Arapahos, Cheyennes, and Kiowas from other villages
downstream moved to engage Custer and his men, the Seventh as-
sumed an increasingly defensive posture, and their dusk departure
can be characterized as an escape. A detachment of soldiers under
Elliott did not join in the escape. The eighteen soldiers were pur-
161