Black Kettle

Southern Cheyenne peace chief, born near the Black Hills in present-day South Dakota, USA. Despite his attempts at accommodation, his band was massacred at Sand Creek, CO (1864). He continued to seek peace but was killed with his tribe in the Washita Valley, OK (1868).

Chief Black Kettle (died November 27, 1868) was a Cheyenne Native American leader.

Black Kettle is depicted as a "peaceful leader" by some and as a "warchief" by others.

Among those who chose to fight back were young men among the ultra-loyal Dog Soldiers. Black Kettle and his band continued to be respected among the Cheyenne, but grew further isolated.

What Black Kettle may have trusted were his own traditions. Black Kettle is remembered as much for how he lived as how he died.

200 Cheyennes (and Black Kettle's warriors, according to Little Rock, from Black Kettle's village) murdered 117 men, women and children in Kansas, Texas and Colorado. On August 19 1868, Chief Little Rock, from Black Kettle's band, admitted that after "most of the youngs" had made the crimes, they came back to Black Kettle's village. The attack against a winter camp was intended to exploit the vulnerability of the Cheyenne, when hypothermia and lack of food made for a stationary and unsuspecting target.

At dawn on the morning of November 27, 1868, Chief Black Kettle, along with other members of his village, were camped on the banks of the Washita River two miles west of present day Cheyenne, Oklahoma. The evening before the attack Black Kettle's wife, Medicine Women Later (her name is a reference to "vision") having been wounded nine times in the butchery at Sand creek, warned the men to move the camp in the dark of night.

The seventh Cavalry, under the command of Lt. Col.

In the quick of the attack, soldiers fired at figures rushing out of lodges and across the snow.

Among the men women and children fleeing, were the elder Chief Black Kettle and his wife, Medicine Woman Later, who with the horse they were mounting fell dead in the creek in a hail of bullets. Although some soldiers took scalps, accounts written in the aftermath credit the Osage scouts with taking Black Kettle’s.

According to Washita prisoners, 11 warchiefs were killed during the battle.

The camp was secured within twenty minutes of the first shots fired. Black Kettle's camp had diminished steadily over the years, and would cease to exist even after the captives were freed the following June, with those remaining finding places separately with other bands.

Camped downstream from Black Kettle's camp were 6,000 to 8,000 Arapaho, Kiowa and Cheyenne.

Washita has been featured in many films and on television. Despite his bloody historical record, Black Kettle is still an inspiration to many in the "peace movement", and was recently portrayed by actor Wes Studi in the television series "Into the West".

Black Kettle lived in western Kansas and eastern Colorado on land guaranteed to the Cheyenne under the Treaty of Fort Laramie (1851).

"Fightin' Preacher" John Chivington's attempt to kill Black Kettle in 1864 at Sand Creek Massacre, failed, but resulted in the Battle of Washita River, November 27 , 1868.

Black Kettle signed the Medicine Lodge Treaty of 1867.