Battle of Arickaree

A Kansas Portrait

Surrounded by hundreds of Cheyenne and Sioux warriors on the Arickaree branch of the Republican River in what is now eastern Colorado, Colonel George Forsyth and his 50 civilian scouts from Kansas took up their defense September 17, 1868, on a small island in the dry river bed.

For several days, the Indians repeatedly attacked killing three men and wounding 18 others, among them the colonel and the surgeon. Then Indian fire also soon killed the horses. Rations vanished and the besieged men began subsisting on a diet of horse flesh, prickly pears, cactus, and coyote meat.

Two attempts by scouts were made to reach help at Fort Wallace, 75 miles away, but both failed. On the third attempt, scouts Allison J. Pliley and John Donovan accepted a three page note from Forsyth and slipped away in the darkness bound for help.

On September 25, the troops of the 10th Cavalry appeared on the horizon and rescued the besieged men. The fight most commonly known as the Battle of Beecher Island, has become one of the more well known battles between American Indians and army troops on the American frontier.