The passing of the frontier : a chronicle of the old West . them-selves up to the reservation life. One of the hardest of pitched battles ever foughtwith an Indian tribe occurred in September, 1868,on the Arickaree or South Fork of the RepublicanRiver, where General Sandy Forsyth, and hisscouts, for nine days fought over six hundredCheyennes and Arapahoes. These savages hadbeen committing atrocities upon the settlers of theSaline, the Solomon, and the Republican valleys,and were known to have killed some sixty-fourmen and women at the time General Sheridanresolved to punish them. Forsyth had n
The passing of the frontier : a chronicle of the old West . them-selves up to the reservation life. One of the hardest of pitched battles ever foughtwith an Indian tribe occurred in September, 1868,on the Arickaree or South Fork of the RepublicanRiver, where General Sandy Forsyth, and hisscouts, for nine days fought over six hundredCheyennes and Arapahoes. These savages hadbeen committing atrocities upon the settlers of theSaline, the Solomon, and the Republican valleys,and were known to have killed some sixty-fourmen and women at the time General Sheridanresolved to punish them. Forsyth had no chanceto get a command of troops, but he was allowedto enlist fifty scouts, all first-class, hardenedfrontiersmen, and with this body of fightingmen he carried out the most dramatic battleperhaps ever waged on the Plains. Forsyth ran into the trail of two or three largeIndian villages, but none the less he followed onuntil he came to the valley of the South the Cheyennes under the redoubtable RomanNose surrounded him on the 17th of THE INDIAN WARS 129 The small band of scouts took refuge on a brushyisland some sixty yards from shore, and hastilydug themselves in under fire. They stood at bay outnumbered ten to one,with small prospect of escape, for the little islandoffered no protection of itself, and was in point-blank range from the banks of the river. Alltheir horses soon were shot down, and the menlay in the rifle pits with no hope of Nose, enraged at the resistance putup by Forsyths men, led a band of some fourhundred of his warriors in the most desperatecharge that has been recorded in all our Indianfighting annals. It was rarely that the Indianwould charge at all; but these tribesmen, strippednaked for the encounter, and led at first by thatgiant warrior, who came on shouting his defiance,charged in full view not only once but threetimes in one day, and got within a hundred feetof the foot of the island where the scouts werelying. Acc
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjectfrontierandpioneerli
