Event to mark 150th anniversary of Hancock’s War in Kansas

In the spring and summer of 1867, angst and tension were riding high on the Kansas plains.

Cowboys were pushing longhorns up the Chisholm Trail. Homesteaders were claiming acres of unbroken sod. Creeks and rivers were flooding. A cholera epidemic visited railroad towns and forts. And buffalo were being slaughtered by the thousands.

Amid all of that were rumors that Indian tribes on the Kansas prairie would rise up in violence.

Enter Gen. Winfield Scott Hancock, war hero from Gettysburg, who had been assigned to command the military Department of the Missouri, which included the states of Missouri and Kansas and the territories of Colorado and New Mexico.

He was stationed at Fort Leavenworth.

And, where on the Kansas prairie there had been peace, he made war.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the beginning of Hancock’s War against the Indians, when George Armstrong Custer came to Kansas and burned down an Indian village in Ness County where Black Kettle and his family had gone to heal after the Sand Creek Massacre.

On April 29, the Fort Larned Old Guard Mess and Muster will commemorate the 1867 Hancock Expedition and War at Fort Larned and at the Cheyenne and Lakota village site. Reservations to attend must be made by April 18.

Events include the re-creation of an Indian village encampment with programs on the Plains Indian culture. Gordon Yellowman, assistant executive director of the department of education for the Cheyenne and Arapaho tribes, will be the evening keynote speaker. Other speakers include Leo Oliva, Kansas historian and author, and Tim Zwink, former deputy director of the Oklahoma Historical Society.

War breaks out

On the Kansas prairie, Indian tribes in 1867 were divided, Oliva said.

There were those who craved peace and who had signed the 1865 Little Arkansas Treaty. Others were less inclined to accept the federal and state governments’ demands for change.

The 1865 Little Arkansas Treaty tried to make amends for the Sand Creek Massacre in the fall of 1864 and ward off potential violence, Oliva said. But it also established boundaries for tribes in Kansas, relegating them to Indian Territory – now Oklahoma – yet letting them continue to hunt buffalo in Kansas.

As long as there were buffalo, Oliva said. And that’s one of the reasons that particular treaty was short-lived. A massive slaughter of the buffalo was underway.

Within two years, tensions in Kansas were high.

“Hancock arrives at Fort Leavenworth never knowing anything about Indians,” Oliva said. “He is hearing rumors that the Indians are going to rise up in 1867. Newspaper reporters, railroad companies building across the Plains and the governments of Kansas and Colorado territory are all saying there will be an uprising.”

But it was the fake news of the day.

“The rumors were all started by people who wanted the Indians removed from Kansas — and by people who would profit from warfare,” Oliva said. “Hancock believes every word he hears.”

What happened next divided the state into an often violent, thundering clash of cultures and, in the end, forced American Indians from the state and spurred European-American settlement of the prairie.

Within a decade, most of the buffalo and Indians were gone from Kansas.

On Kansas soil

In April 1867, Custer was on his first command in the Indian Wars with the 7th Cavalry crossing the Kansas prairie when Hancock ordered him to surround a Cheyenne-Sioux village in a show of force.

The village was about 20 miles northwest of Fort Larned, Oliva said.

On April 10, 1867, a blizzard roared across the Kansas plains, dumping 10 inches of snow and hampering the military’s efforts to close in on the village.

The village’s residents – a number of whom had survived the Sand Creek Massacre in eastern Colorado three years earlier – learned of the approaching troops and fled, leaving tipis, food, blankets and tools behind.

Hancock ordered the village burned on April 14, 1867.

“Hancock believes if the Indians ran away, they must be guilty of something,” Oliva said.

The next day three Butterfield Overland Dispatch agents were killed in Ellis County by Indians as they fled the burning village.

Historians say the act was a turning point in the nation’s Indian Wars, instilling fear and mistrust among American Indians and setting up major conflicts in the future.

“The killing of these station agents is part of a much larger story,” Oliva said. “They are the first victims of Hancock’s war.

“The Oglala Sioux were headed north to go home,” Oliva said. “They came to Lookout Station and saw three guys, and that’s where they took revenge. The Indians had lost everything and were responding to that.

“The guys at the station had no warning, no idea what was happening. They were innocent victims, too.”

The day the Indian village was burned, Hancock ordered Custer to head north to overtake the Indians. Custer and his troops arrived at the station at least two days after the men were killed.

“I caused them to be buried near the station with as much care as the circumstances would permit,” Custer wrote.

‘Ethnic cleansing’

In 150 years, time brings perspective.

The cholera epidemic of 1867 killed more people than the war, but Hancock’s War started the momentum for what became the Indian Wars. They didn’t end until Custer’s defeat during the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876 and the massacre at Wounded Knee on Dec. 29, 1890.

“Hancock creates a war where there had been none,” Oliva said. “Hancock is removed from his command and assigned reconstruction duty with the Union troops in Texas and Louisiana.”

Hancock later ran for president in 1880 on the Democrat ticket but lost to James Garfield.

But the spring and summer of 1867 remained a turning point for American Indians in Kansas.

“Hancock organizes a large military presence,” Oliva said. “He comes up with 1,400 troops and marches those troops to Fort Larned to meet with tribal leaders of the Cheyenne and Arapaho. Then goes to Fort Dodge to meet with the Kiowa and Comanche. He keeps making these talks and giving information to the newspapers that he is preparing for war if the Indians want it.”

Hancock comes to Kansas during the spring rains.

Creeks are up.

He uses pontoon bridges to cross the Pawnee River, then surrounds the Indian village.

“This place was the home of hundreds of Cheyenne and Sioux in 1867,” Oliva said. “It was destroyed in an act that today we might call ‘ethnic cleansing’ for it was based on racism, cultural ignorance and national arrogance.

“It is a major landmark in the history of the Indian Wars. It belonged to the Indians, and the Indian side of that story needs to be better explained.”

This story was originally published April 6, 2017 at 8:06 PM with the headline "Event to mark 150th anniversary of Hancock’s War in Kansas."