The Kidder Fight (or Kidder Massacre), of July 2, 1867 refers to a skirmish near what is now

Goodland, Kansas Goodland is a city in and the county seat of Sherman County, Kansas, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 4,465. It was named after Goodland, Indiana. Goodland is home to Northwest Kansas Technical College. H ...

involving a detachment of ten enlisted men and an Indian scout of the United States 2nd Cavalry under the command of Second Lieutenant Lyman S. Kidder who were attacked and wiped out by a mixed

Lakota Lakota may refer to: *Lakota people, a confederation of seven related Native American tribes *Lakota language, the language of the Lakota peoples Place names In the United States: *Lakota, Iowa *Lakota, North Dakota, seat of Nelson County *Lakota ...

and

Cheyenne The Cheyenne ( ) are an Indigenous people of the Great Plains. Their Cheyenne language belongs to the Algonquian language family. Today, the Cheyenne people are split into two federally recognized nations: the Southern Cheyenne, who are enroll ...

force. Two Lakota, including chief Yellow Horse were also killed.Powell, ''People of the Sacred Mountain'', vol. I, p. 487. The fight occurred during the period of the

Indian Wars The American Indian Wars, also known as the American Frontier Wars, and the Indian Wars, were fought by European governments and colonists in North America, and later by the United States and Canadian governments and American and Canadian settle ...

on the western plains and was an incident in the campaign known as

Hancock's War Porcupine (c. 1848–1929) was a Cheyenne chief and medicine man. He is best known for bringing the Ghost Dance religion to the Cheyenne. Raised with the Sioux of a Cheyenne mother, he married a Cheyenne himself and became a warrior in the Chey ...

Lyman Kidder

Born in

Vermont Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to ...

, Lt. Lyman Kidder was a son of

politician A politician is a person active in party politics, or a person holding or seeking an elected office in government. Politicians propose, support, reject and create laws that govern the land and by an extension of its people. Broadly speaking, a ...

and

judge A judge is a person who presides over court proceedings, either alone or as a part of a panel of judges. A judge hears all the witnesses and any other evidence presented by the barristers or solicitors of the case, assesses the credibility an ...

Jefferson P. Kidder Jefferson Parish Kidder (June 4, 1815 – October 2, 1883) was an American lawyer and jurist. He served as the non-voting delegate from the Dakota Territory to the United States House of Representatives. Kidder was the only Democratic lieutenant ...

. His family moved to the

Dakota Territory The Territory of Dakota was an organized incorporated territory of the United States that existed from March 2, 1861, until November 2, 1889, when the final extent of the reduced territory was split and admitted to the Union as the states of No ...

, and he served in the

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union ("the North") and the Confederacy ("the South"), the latter formed by states th ...

. In January 1867, he was appointed as a

second lieutenant Second lieutenant is a junior commissioned officer military rank in many armed forces, comparable to NATO OF-1 rank. Australia The rank of second lieutenant existed in the military forces of the Australian colonies and Australian Army until ...

in the regular army. He was an uncle of Jeff Kidder, an

Old West The American frontier, also known as the Old West or the Wild West, encompasses the geography, history, folklore, and culture associated with the forward wave of American expansion in mainland North America that began with European colonial ...

lawman.

Kidder's mission

In June 1867 Kidder and his men were ordered to take dispatches from General

William T. Sherman William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

to Lieutenant Colonel

George A. Custer George Armstrong Custer (December 5, 1839 – June 25, 1876) was a United States Army officer and cavalry commander in the American Civil War and the American Indian Wars. Custer graduated from West Point in 1861 at the bottom of his class, b ...

, camped on the

Republican River The Republican River is a river in the central Great Plains of North America, rising in the High Plains (United States), High Plains of eastern Colorado and flowing east U.S. Geological Survey. National Hydrography Dataset high-resolution flowline ...

Nebraska Nebraska () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. It is bordered by South Dakota to the north; Iowa to the east and Missouri to the southeast, both across the Missouri River; Kansas to the south; Colorado to the southwe ...

. Lt. Kidder's party reached the encampment, but prior to their arrival, Custer had become restless and moved his force to the south, then to the northwest. When Lt. Kidder discovered Custer's force had departed, he seemed to have thought Custer moved south to

Fort Wallace Fort Wallace ( 1865–1882) was a US Cavalry fort built in Wallace County, Kansas to help defend settlers against Cheyenne and Sioux raids. All that remains today is the cemetery, but for a period of over a decade Fort Wallace was one of the most ...

Chance encounter and fight

En route to

, Kidder and his troops were spotted by Oglala Lakota buffalo hunters who alerted the inhabitants of two small camps on nearby Little Beaver Creek in Colorado, that soldiers with pack mules were headed their way and would arrive in a short time. The camp inhabitants were

Oglala Lakota The Oglala (pronounced , meaning "to scatter one's own" in Lakota language) are one of the seven subtribes of the Lakota people who, along with the Dakota people, Dakota, make up the Sioux, Očhéthi Šakówiŋ (Seven Council Fires). A majority ...

and

people who were in the area hunting buffalo. In the Oglala camp

Pawnee Killer Pawnee Killer (born 1826) 890 Indian Census, Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, M595_364, National Archives/ref> was a leader of the Oglala. He also led a band of mixed Sioux-Cheyenne Dog Soldiers during the US war against the Plains Indians. His na ...

and Bear Raising Mischief were headmen. The leading men in the nearby Cheyenne camp were Tangle Hair, Tobacco and Howling Wolf. With them camped were nine young

Dog Soldiers The Dog Soldiers or Dog Men (Cheyenne: ''Hotamétaneo'o'') are historically one of six Cheyenne military societies. Beginning in the late 1830s, this society evolved into a separate, militaristic band that played a dominant role in Cheyenne re ...

, among them Two Crows and Good Bear who later gave the only extant eyewitness report of the fight to George Bent who in turn furnished it in writing to George E. Hyde. On June 29, some Lakota men and all Cheyenne men stayed in camp because it was an unusually warm day, relaxing in the shades of their lodges while the women were sewing and chatting. The Cheyenne men had their ponies picketed close by their lodges and, when alerted, were the first to ride to meet the soldiers. When Kidder's men spotted the twelve approaching Dog Soldiers, they raced off at a gallop in search of a defensible position and soon dismounted and sought shelter in a depression. The Dog Soldiers circled the soldiers, shooting at them while the Oglala men, arriving shortly after and fighting in Lakota fashion, dismounted and approached the soldiers on foot. According to Cheyenne accounts, the Lakota scout Red Bead, who was with the soldiers, called out to his fellow tribesmen to be spared, but his pleas went unheeded by the enraged warriors who considered him a traitor. Two of the circling Cheyenne warriors, Tobacco and Good Bear, exposing themselves to the fire of the soldiers, had their ponies shot from under them whereas two Oglala warriors were killed in the fight. One of them was Yellow Horse, who had been made a chief just shortly before. According to the eyewitnesses the fight lasted only a short time. All members of the Kidder party were killed, and the Lakotas scalped and ritually mutilated them to render them unable to fight in the afterworld by smashing in their skulls, slashing the sinews of their arms and legs, cutting off their noses as well and then filling every dead body with arrows. Red Bead was scalped as well but his scalp thrown into the dust next to him in a gesture of contempt for scouting against his fellow tribesmen. The two Lakota men killed were two of only four Indians killed in the entire Hancock campaign by U.S. troops, the other two being One Bear and Eagle's Nest, two members of

Black Kettle Black Kettle (Cheyenne: Mo'ohtavetoo'o) (c. 1803November 27, 1868) was a prominent leader of the Southern Cheyenne during the American Indian Wars. Born to the ''Northern Só'taeo'o / Só'taétaneo'o'' band of the Northern Cheyenne in the Black ...

's "friendly"

Southern Cheyenne The Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes are a united, federally recognized tribe of Southern Arapaho and Southern Cheyenne people in western Oklahoma. History The Cheyennes and Arapahos are two distinct tribes with distinct histories. The Cheyenne (Tsi ...

camp, killed at Cimmarron Crossing near Fort Larned when trying to get out of the war zone.

Aftermath

When Custer sent troopers to search for Lt. Kidder's party, they found a dead army horse on the trail, then signs of a running battle for a few miles along Beaver Creek. On 12 July, Custer's scout Will Comstock found the mutilated bodies of the Kidder party north of Beaver Creek in northern Sherman County, Kansas. The Army concluded the men were killed by a war party of

and

Sioux The Sioux or Oceti Sakowin (; Dakota language, Dakota: Help:IPA, /otʃʰeːtʰi ʃakoːwĩ/) are groups of Native Americans in the United States, Native American tribes and First Nations in Canada, First Nations peoples in North America. The ...

warriors led by

. Kidder's body, identified by his shirt, was taken by his father, a judge in the Dakota territory, for burial in the family plot in St. Paul, Minnesota."Kidder Massacre: list of the fallen"
, Goodland, Kansas Website, accessed 23 October 2009"Kidder Massacre"
, photo of historic marker, Garry Owen Website, accessed 23 October 2009 The bodies of the other soldiers were taken to Fort Wallace and buried. When Fort Wallace was closed in the 1880s, the soldiers' remains were moved to

Fort Leavenworth Fort Leavenworth () is a United States Army installation located in Leavenworth County, Kansas, in the city of Leavenworth, Kansas, Leavenworth. Built in 1827, it is the second oldest active United States Army post west of Washington, D.C., an ...

, where they were reinterred. Numerous artists depicted Custer's arriving at the scene of the fight. In his book, ''My Life on the Plains'', Custer described it in these words: "Each body was pierced by from 20 to 50 arrows, and the arrows were found as the savage demons had left them, bristling in the bodies." In 1967 "The Friends of the Library of Goodland Kansas" erected an historic marker in honor of the soldiers and scout, on land owned by Kuhrt Farms.

References

External links